


Ready, Set, Go! Speed Prompts

by Asynca



Category: Tomb Raider (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-05 18:20:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 50,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11018943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: A collection of all the Tomb Raider Lara/Sam prompts given to me by people on Tumblr. Most are set in the The Camera Loves You-verse, some before the game, some after. Enjoy!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Prompt: That one time at film camp."
> 
> Good one!
> 
> That One Time at Film Camp - Sam/OC, Lara - (a tiny little bit) NSFW
> 
> Pre-slash, bby.

Yeah, well. You know what they say, right? What happens at film camp _stays_ at film camp.

Actually film camp is kind of a misnomer because it's not actually a _camp_ per se. It's a convention thing that happens in West London once a year and all the media and film tech students go to it. There's heaps of industry there and you're supposed to network and make connections. Well, that's the plan, anyway. What _actually_ happens is that we all sit and look very serious in lecture theaters all day and then get totally wasted and 'make connections' at the bar afterwards.

I tried to get Lara to come a couple of times but she was too busy with research and always gave me some lame excuse. It drove me nuts. As _if_ she couldn't find _one night_ in the week to come out, right? Whatever, it was her loss. Media students are crazy after the cameras are off.

It was the second to last night and I was having a personal crisis because all the cute guys at convention were ones I'd hooked up with last year. Not that I have a problem with recycling, exactly, but when there's six hundred students you only see once a year you want to choose wisely.

Also, and probably most importantly, I was wearing the _cutest_ top. It would be some sort of crime against fashion if it didn't get me laid at least once.

I was leaning against the bar, putting back my fourth or fifth splice when I realized that most of the cute boys had already picked up and the next tier down was all that was left at hotel bar. I put my glass on the table and made a face. Not an ideal situation, but not a total write-off, either. My family was well-known for our commitment to charity. I would just have to tap into that Nishimura generosity and gift one of these poor guys with a night he'd never forget.

…if I could walk over to one of them without falling over, that was. I put a hand out to the bar to steady myself and nearly grabbed some girl's jeans.

"Whoa, whoa…" she said, and grabbed my arms to stop me from falling over.

I straightened, fixing my super cute top. "Thanks," I said. "On second thoughts, maybe I should have stopped at my _last_ splice."

She was pretty hot herself, actually. She had a legit 'fro which was hedge-cut to a perfect sphere and was wearing a gold jeans that might as well have been sprayed on. Okay, I'll be honest, I did notice she was carrying a bit of extra weight, but it totally suited her. She was also wearing this really bold zebra-stripe top that I could never pull off. For like three seconds I wished I was a really hot black girl.

She noticed me looking. "Hey, you like it?" She smoothed it down her front. She had _huge_ boobs. "I wasn't too sure if I could get away with it but YOLO, right?"

"Right," I repeated. "And it totally suits you."

She grinned, and then turned to look out at the slim selection of tail still drinking around us. "Pity it's all for nothing."

I laughed. The room was spinning a little. "I know! I was just thinking that. I dressed up for _this?_ Maybe I should just go home."

"I think I'm going to have to adjust my expectations of how this evening is going to go," she said, and held out her hand to me. She had this huge white statement ring on and after admiring it, I shook her hand. "Emily," she said. "Wardrobe design." All the great clothes suddenly made perfect sense. She looked me up and down. "You're Samantha Nishimura, right?"

I pretended to curtsy and nearly fell over again. "That's me."

"I thought so. I loved that documentary you did." She tapped her chin. "What was it called? Something about Blue Skies."

"—Blue Skies over London," I said. The irony was that in every shot it was pouring with rain. "Thanks. Wish my tutor had liked it as much."

She rolled her eyes. "Tell me about it. Some of them are _so_ old school. I got some comment on my portfolio that I needed to pay more attention to matching fabrics. It was ridiculous, don't they know that hipster fashion is all about specifically choosing items that don't match?" She laughed, and then finished her laugh, smiling at me. "Well, your tutor is an idiot. Your work is _brilliant_. You're pretty cute, too."

I squinted at her. That smile was a little too attentive. "Are you hitting on me?" I giggled. I hadn't expected that at first because she didn't seem nearly as drunk as I was.

She leaned casually on the bar. "Well, you're a step up from _these_ guys." She nodded out at the men circulating. "I'm guessing you're not gay?"

"Ten points," I said, grinning at her. "Although maybe I shouldn't give them to you because you probably saw me up on some guy on Wednesday night."

"And Thursday," she agreed. "Should I buy you a drink? Isn't that usually how guys do it?"

I held my hand up. "No more drinks," I said. "Unless you really enjoy making out with people who are comatose. I'm good to go now."

She laughed. "Well, then," she said, and took a step in towards me. "Shit. What am I doing?"

"I hear you," I said, looking down the neckline of her top into extremely intimidating cleavage. That was certainly something I'd never expected to see when I was about to get it on with someone.

When she kissed me I totally had a Katy Perry moment, because I could taste her lip gloss. She had it all over these big pillowy lips which I wasn't sure if I should be jealous of or pleased about. Her body was also really soft, and the graduation of that little waist into her big hips was kind of an interesting feeling under my hands. I wasn't really turned or anything to start with. I mean, it wasn't gross or anything, but it was _a girl_.

That all changed when her nails brushed over the fabric of my cute top where one of my nipples was. It was hard for some reason – reflex, probably – and when she touched it, it felt _good._ Okay, I thought, I could totally go for this. I put my hand under _her_ top to explore her supersized boobs.

"Hey, ladies," the bartender was saying near us. "You'll need to take that somewhere else."

She stopped kissing me for a minute, her face still really close to mine. I could smell a combination of strawberry lip gloss and perfume. "You staying here?" she murmured. There was a smile in her voice.

I wasn't, and back at my apartment Lara would definitely still be awake. I didn't want to have to explain to her why I was taking a random girl into my bedroom. I wasn't sure she'd understand; she always got really weird whenever the topic of girl-on-girl came up.

"Not unless you count my car," I said. "It _is_ a Lexus, though, so it has leather seats."

She laughed. "How High School," she said. "Okay, let's go."

Despite being catastrophically above the blood alcohol limit, I managed to find my car in the parking lot. We piled onto the back seat of it and I lay on top of her. She pulled me down and we got stuck into kissing again. My phone was vibrating in my back pocket, but I ignored it.

Her top was pretty loose and came over her head nice and easy. I sat back. "Wow," I said, admiring what it revealed. "That's a _really_ nice bra."

She looked down at it. "Yeah, it's _Ann Summers_ ," she said. "I think it's the only style that comes in my size."

"That doesn't surprise me," I said. Her size was colossal. Literally, they were as big as my head. To test this theory, I put my face between them. It made her laugh. "Mine are kind of disappointing in comparison," I mumbled into her skin.

She pushed me up and pulled _my_ cute top off. I took my bra off and let her fill her hands with my boobs. She looked thoughtful. "All of you is so tiny," she said. "You're like a fairy or something."

"A _fairy_?" I asked her, bursting into giggles. "Are you _serious_?"

She was giggling with me. "I'm really drunk, okay? I don't know what I'm saying. Or what I'm doing, apparently." She was messing with my belt. "Have you been with a girl before?"

"Nope," I said. "Well, I kissed a few girls on dance floors, but that was mainly to tease guys."

"Yeah, me neither," she said. "You think that makes us bi?"

I shrugged. "I am _way_ too drunk to be making life decisions right now. Let's just fuck and worry about the details later."

We messed around for a bit, and at some point her bra came off and my hand ended up down her pants. I was just trying to decide if I was brave enough to go down on her when she yelled and made a grab for her top, looking out the window behind me.

"What?" I asked her, automatically reaching for my top. Someone had probably walked past. "The windows are way too fogged, no one can see in."

"Someone put their face against the car," she said. "Scared the hell out of me."

"Let's give them a thrill," I said. "Come on."

She was trying to stop me as I rolled down the window and leaned out of it, only holding a t-shirt in front of my chest. "Hey!" I called at the figure who was hurriedly walking away. "Did you get the show you were—" The figure turned around when I called out to them. I immediately recognized her and my heart practically stopped. "— _Lara_?!"

She had a really strange, hurt expression on her face. Her eyes flickered between me and the other side of the car. Emily had gotten out, somehow managing to get dressed in record time. It took her the space of a second to go from hurt to _shocked_. "Is that a…?" she began and then stopped, her mouth open. Emily couldn't have been any _more_ female.

"Yeah, I think this is where I make a timely exit," Emily said to me when she saw Lara's expression, and then jogged off through the parking lot. I watched her go, kind of annoyed with everything. I'd been really gearing up for some good head.

Lara was just staring at me. She came to some internal conclusion, and then spun on her heels, crossed her arms across her chest and marched away. I quickly pulled my cute top over my head and staggered uncomfortably after her; my bra was still somewhere in the car. "Lara! Come back!"

She didn't stop until I circled her upper arm and made her. God, this was going to be awkward. Lara was so uptight. "Can you not be weird about this? I was just messing around."

She looked sharply at me. I noticed she was all dressed up. "'Weird about this'? Really, Sam?"

I shrugged. "Like I said, it doesn't have to _mean_ anything, I was just—"

"Sam, I don't care what it means." And yet, she looked like she seriously cared about something. "I just…" She sighed. "I just thought I'd surprise you by coming out to have some fun with you, after all. But I suppose you're ready to leave."

I glanced in the direction Emily had fled. "Well, in case you didn't notice, my ride has kind of left without me." That made her smile a little. "We could go back inside the hotel and chill a bit, I guess."

She looked a little coy. "If you're hoping I'll pick up where she left off, I'm not sure there's enough alcohol in the world for that."

I loved hearing her being cheeky. Maybe I was wrong about the whole weird thing with her. "I don't know," I said. "There's a _lot_ of alcohol in that place. Wait a second, let me just get my bra."

The bartender looked kind of confused when I came back in with a different girl than I'd left with, but he played it cool. "No more drinks for you," he told me, though, and then looked pointedly at Lara.

"I have to drive," she told him apologetically. "But I'll have a diet coke."

While he was pouring it for her, she sat against the bar with me. After a few seconds, a lightbulb practically sprung to life over her head. "Huh," she said, surveying all the patrons. "I suddenly understand why you made the choices you just did." She accepted her diet coke and took a sip. "If _this_ is the selection of men film camp has, no wonder you keep nagging me to come along and keep you company."

I had this, like, fraction of a second where I very nearly leaned over and kissed her. I mean, it's not that confusing why; she was _way_ hotter than all the guys there and since I'd just had my hands in some other girl's pants it wasn't a giant leap to be looking at _this_ girl like that.

Luckily, despite being wasted, I managed to not. She was my best friend. …and she was looking pretty good, and I never did get that head I was after.

I looked forward, taking a deep breath. Lara was just being all quiet and sweet next to me and had _no idea_ what I'd just nearly done.

Okay, Sam, I thought. That's _enough_ alcohol for tonight. Dangerous ground, here.

"Just let me know if you're going to come next time so I can drink a whole lot less," I told her, but didn't say why.

That is the one thing that could happen that would not end up staying just at film camp.


	2. When Your Heroes Aren't Heroes - Drabble - Lara

I've spent so long looking up to him.

I've seen all his episode so many times that I can ever pause the video and recite all the dialogue afterward. I know all the locations, all the artefacts, all the theories, _everything_ he was searching for. I would often say to Roth, "One day it's going to be ' _Lara's World_ ' and you'll be watching me on that telly!"

Whitman was everything I wanted to be, everything. Until I met him.

I didn't really expect him to recognise my name or care about whose daughter I was. He didn't, anyway. I told myself that was fine, because I didn't want to always be Richard's daughter. If he didn't know my father, good! I could prove myself to him just by showing him what I knew.

He didn't care about what I knew, though. He wouldn't listen. Why should he? I asked myself. I'm just a fresh graduate from a normal Bachaelor's, of course he doesn't want to listen to me. I probably don't even know enough to realise what I don't know.

It took Sam all evening to convince me to confront him again, and I did, in front of everyone. It turned into so much of a fight that _Roth_ had to step in.

After that he didn't say a word to me for days. Still I forgave him in my head. Would I believe me if I'd just met me? I caught sight of myself in the mirror while I was getting ready for bed all those nights. I'm so young, I always thought. I'm so young, of course he can't see the years of research and study I've put into this. He's just being cautious with his savings and Sam's Family's money. He's been doing this for decades, told myself. _I_ should be the one learning from _him._

It wasn't until he was pointing a gun at the Russians that I finally accepted he wasn't the idol I needed him to be. He was pointing, not firing, and then surrendering.

"Just go along with them Lara," he was saying while a man was kneeling on my back and binding my hands. He didn't know what they wanted or what they planned to do to me. "Just go along with them and do whatever they say!"

It was when I stopped trusting my old hero that I became one myself.


	3. Revenge (Drabble) - Lara & Sam (POV)

o, I can't actually see Lara as much as I can _feel_ her hovering behind me. She does this thing where she gets up to get a drink from the kitchen and on the way back just happens to catch sight of whatever I'm doing on the computer. It drives me nuts.

Inevitably I hear a disapproving noise and a hand extends over my shoulder. "You have a typo," she says helpfully, pointing at my screen. "Just there, and also you've missed a comma–"

I push her hand away. "They're _notes_ , Lara." I twist in my chair so she can see me roll my eyes. "I'm not writing a dissertation."

She pretends to shrug casually as she takes a sip from her glass of water. "Okay," she says, in a tone of voice which suggests that it's not okay. That, in fact, leaving like one single typo in my own personal notes is _the beginning of the end._ From here it's just a short slide into oblivion and the point where I hand in all my essays in txt spk.

Later, when _I'm_ coming back out of the kitchen with a cold slice of pizza, I pull Lara's trick. She's leaning towards the computer screen, chewing on her lip. Over her shoulder I can see she's elbow-deep in some totally dry translation. Gleefully I notice she's made a mistake.

"Wrong ' _shou_ ," I inform her. "That's the heart radical, not the hand one. It means 'threaten'."

Lara looks slowly back toward me, very successfully interpreting the character through narrowed eyes. She corrects her error, though.

I smirk and strut off to finish my pizza. I think I even have another episode of _Nothing to Declare_ downloaded and ready to watch, too.

–

When I finish the episode and go to drop my plate off back in the kitchen, there is this incredibly epic pile of dishes in the sink. I swear to God every dish we own is in there, and there's some thick film of grease over every single one of them. A quick glance at the fridge and Lara's perfectly drawn roster indicates that tonight the dishes are my problem.

I lean out of the kitchen. "What the fuck, Lara? Are you moonlighting as a wedding caterer or something?"

She doesn't even look up from the screen. "Oh, I accidentally spilled a whole bottle of olive oil into the cupboard," she says very neutrally, totally aware of the fact we both know she has ninja-like reflexes. "I'm so sorry."

–

Lara usually has a shower at nine or ten at night, when she's trying to convince herself to go to bed. It never works, though, because she's always up until at least midnight. I wait until she's shut in the bathroom and then creep over to her computer. She's done with the translation and is in the middle of proof-reading her final essay. I read a few paragraphs; it's about the role of women in feudal Japan. Like, I don't want to be a total traitor to my ancestors or anything but this stuff is _so boring._ I groan, and then insert a few errors into it. I stop when I get to five, though. I'm not a sadist.

When Lara emerges from the bathroom I'm sitting on her desk, drinking a coffee and smiling darkly at her.

She stares at me, a towel around her middle. "Why do I have a bad feeling about that smile?"

I push myself slowly off the table. "Since your idea of entertainment is correct typos," I say, "I hid six of them in your essay. Enjoy!"

Lara does _the best_ evil glares. She directs one of her finest and then stomps over to her computer as I vacate it, not even bothering to get dressed. "You didn't…" she says, tabbing through it as if I'd be dumb enough to put in errors that spellcheck would pick up. She looks up at me, just to double-check I'm not messing with her. I pretend to toast her with my coffee, and then take a mouthful.

"I'm going to bed," I tell her, leaving her gaping at me. "Washing all those dishes was totally exhausting."

–

At some point during the night I wake up from a really weird dream about France and realize that Lara's isn't in the bed across from me. I sit up just to double-check; the blankets are still tucked neatly under the pillow. I glance at the clock: the red text reads _02:17._

Wandering out into the living room, I see Lara's face in the glow of her computer screen. She has stopped glaring and now just looks tired and distressed. There are deep frown lines in her forehead. She glances at me as I stand in the doorway. "I hate you," she says.

"Payback for the dishes," I tell her. "Don't tell me you can't find them all."

She makes a face. "I found five," she says. "I've been looking for the sixth for the last two hours." She leans back from the computer screen, stretching. "I give up," she says. "You win. Where's the sixth?"

I wince. I had totally forgotten I told her there were six. "Uh, you promise you won't kill me?" She _looks_ at me. I close me eyes for a moment, bracing myself. "There were only five mistakes."

When I open my eyes again, her jaw is open. Then, her face crumples and she _glares_ at me again. "I hate you," she repeats. "I've been doing this for hours, Sam!"

I squint at her. "I'm sorry?"

For a moment I'm totally sure she's going to _reem_ me. Then, after a few moments, she just exhales. "I deserve that for the dishes," she says eventually, the anger fading. "God, I'm so tired. At least now I know I can sleep."

When we both go to bed, she falls asleep in this strange position with her arms tangled over her head. I roll onto my back and smile at the ceiling.

Living with Lara is just so much fun.


	4. Anonymous asked: Could you write a drabble where Sam and Lara have a cute conversation about what their lives would be like in a parallel universe where they're a domestic couple? Pretty please? D: - Sam (POV)/Lara - SFW

Okay, so it's not really so much the mud that bothers me. I mean, I voluntarily slather myself in that stuff at dayspas – it's supposed to be really good for your skin, right? I've narrowed it down to a combination of running _everywhere_ , crouching in God knows what bushes that are probably full of all sorts of bugs and carrying all Lara's extra ammo. I feel like a girl-sized backpack sometimes.

So this time, we're in Somalia and there are all these rebels _everywhere_ and I have seriously no idea who're the good guys and who're the bad guys. There's sand in _everything_ , no matter how much I drink I'm still hot and thirsty. To make everything just a million times worst, I'm _sunburnt._

"Can you pass me the binoculars?" Lara says, crouching around a corner and waving her hand at me like I'm her butler.

I sigh, and then look around in my pack for them. "You know, I have this fantasy where you're not some super human weapon, but you're just a normal archaeologist who spends all their time bitching about other academics and stressing about finding funding."

Lara glances back at me. "I have a fantasy where you hand me the binoculars before we're spotted and shot to death," she says glibly. When I give them to her, she spends a good five minutes looking through them at whatever and I wonder what all the rush was for.

"What would you do, do you think?" I ask her, thinking about it. "Like, if we found Yamatai and it was just this boring island with some old relics on it. What do you think life would be like now?"

"I think I'd have given up turning Alex down and just married him to shut him up." She glances back at me. Whatever I'd been thinking must have shown on my face, because she smiles at me. "Kidding," she says, and goes back to looking through the binoculars.

"Do you think we would have gotten together?" It's actually kind of an interesting question. "If that whole Sun Queen thing didn't happen?"

She takes her bow off her back, threads an arrow through it and takes her sweet time with it stretched before finally releasing it. I hear the unmistakable thud of it hitting human flesh, and wince. She doesn't even flinch and already has another one strung. "I thought you said you were after me for ages before Yamatai?" she says with the feather of the arrow next to her lips, and then releases it again. Someone else drops.

I shrug. "I think we would have. At some point I would have gotten sick of waiting, gotten really drunk and just gone, 'To hell with it!'."

She has the binoculars up again. "There's your answer, then," she says, but she doesn't sound very engaged in the conversation. I take her arm, and she bends back around the corner and looks at me.

"This is important," I say. "Like, I think we need to talk about this."

Her eyebrows are up. "Right now?" she says, glancing towards the corner again. "There are at least two still left, and they all have assault rifles." When she sees my expression, she chuckles and sits back against the wall. "Okay. You want to know if I'd have gotten involved with you if Yamatai hadn't happened?" I nod. She gives the question good consideration. "I don't know," she says honestly. "I don't know if I'd have been as open to it."

I shift from kneeling to sitting back against the rough sandstone wall beside her. "It's so strange to think about it," I decide. "I mean, on one hand it would be _so_ awesome to not have sand in my underwear and for my nose to not be peeling. Also, that shrapnel in my arm that keeps setting off the scanning things at airports. On the other hand, I get to hit that." I give her a cheeky grin. "Tough decision."

"Well, I'll probably retire one day," Lara says. "Then you can 'hit that' _and_ be clean and comfortable."

I snort. "Yeah, I can totally imagine it. You won't quit until you're, like, a hundred and then we'll be too old to enjoy it."

She's smiling at the thought. "I bet when we're a hundred you'll still look like you're fifteen. And I'll been all old and wrinkly and I'll have so many holes in me I'll look like an old withered slice of swiss cheese."

"I'd still eat you."

 _That_ makes her cringe. "Oh, God, Sam!" she says, smacking my arm. " _Too far!_ "

I'm laughing. "Sorry," I say, but it's not true at all.

"What about _you_?" she says, looking sideways at me. "I bet you'll still be sexting me when your thumbs are so full of arthritis you can hardly bend them."

Just as she says that, two guys in combat gear come barreling around the corner and look just as surprised to see us as we are them. Fortunately, surprise does really great things to Lara, and before I can even figure out what's going on they're both lying dead at our feet, bleeding into the sand. Lara is still crouching there with a magnum in her hand.

One of the bodies is twitching. It's gross. We both stare at it. When it's clear there aren't more of them coming, Lara finally relaxes and I try and wipe some of the bad guy blood off my bare legs. That's gross, too. Who knows what bad guy germs they have.

Lara has the binoculars up again, so I guess our conversation is over. Not that having it while staring at two freshly dead guys is that appealing, anyway.

I take out my phone and tap away at it while she's busy. She doesn't notice, so when hers buzzes she looks surprised and checks it immediately, reading the message aloud. "' _Hey sexy, what are you wearing right now…?'."_ She gives me a look. "I hope 'the blood of my enemies' is enough of a turn on for you," she says, and then gestures to me. "Come on, the coast is clear, we can probably make it back to the Jeep."

I follow her, like always.


	5. TAX TIME – Sam, Lara - SFW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: I didn't expect you to actually write that prompt about Lara doing errands XD I was trying to make the most boring prompt possible. I was even thinking about adding Lara doing her taxes or something like that.
> 
> I can do that, too. I'm also overdue for writing some crackfic, aren't I?

Lara had been staring at the same paragraph on her screen for a good twenty minutes. She'd known it was going to be a difficult feat to try and fit three references into the same sentence, but it just had to be done. She was already over the word limit.

At the entrance to the flat the main door opened and closed, and someone was humming Ke$ha and then quietly yelling at themselves for it. "Do _not_ let me sing that," Sam told Lara as she wandered into the living room. "Not ever." She dropped a foolscap-sized envelope onto the table beside Lara. "Oh, hey, this came for you."

Lara frowned at it. She hadn't been expecting anything, had she? She turned it over to read the return address. Maybe one of the universities in London had— "—OH MY GOD," she shrieked, and then flung it across the room.

Sam looked alarmed. "What is it?" she asked, backing away from where Lara had thrown it, just in case.

"You don't want to know." Lara slowly edged into the doorway. "Don't go near it without me," she told Sam sternly, and then disappeared into her bedroom. She spent a good several minutes turning her room upside down before ducking her head back into the room Sam was in. "Have you seen my Magnums?"

Sam stared at her. "I'm guessing you don't mean the condoms, right?" Lara _looked_ at her, and she shook her head. "I don't touch your stuff," she said, and Lara gave her another look. "Okay, I totally do, but I haven't touched your guns."

Lara made a frustrated noise and then marched into the kitchen and came back with an enormous steak knife. She held it in a Psycho grip as she carefully approached the envelope.

"What's inside?" Sam asked, her back flat against the wall. "Is it magic?"

" _Worse_ ," Lara said, very gingerly taking the corner of and holding it at arms' length, escorting it across the room and depositing it beside her laptop. Then, she carefully slipped the tip of the knife under the lip of the envelope and roughly _hacked it open_.

Sam _screamed._ Lara turned around to blink at her. "I'm sorry," Sam said. "It just seemed like screaming would be appropriate there."

"You will be _actually_ screaming in a minute," Lara said, tipping the contents of the envelope out all over the surface of the table. "You don't know what it is, do you?" Sam swallowed and shook her head. "Don't you know what time of year it is? And what happens at that time of year…?"

Recognition dawned on Sam's face. It _couldn't_ be. " _No_ ," she breathed. "No— it feels like just yesterday that we just finished last years'…"

Lara had a dark expression on her face. "Well, believe it." She picked up one of the thick wads of paper. "Here," she said. "Do something with this…"

Sam inched over and accepted the paper from Lara, flipping over a single sheet reading a single word before clamping her eyes shut. She held it back at Lara. "I can't do it," she said, shaking her head stiffly. "I just can't. _You_ do it!"

Lara pushed it back towards her. "We're in this together!" she said. "Help me!"

Sam just looked at the wad of paper in her shaking hands for a few seconds, and then made an attempt to read it again. On every page there were so many lines and numbers and empty fields and it all swum around together like alphabet soup. "I… I don't understand any of this," Sam said, flipping page after page of incoherent numerobabble. "I don't understand _any_ of it, Lara! What's a…" she leaned closer to the page, "'capital gain'?" she asked, and then kept reading that paragraph for it to only keep descending further into language that just _couldn't_ be English. "Lara! Please, what's does this even mean? What's _a negative gear_ and why would anyone use it? _Why can't we use a positive one?_ "

Just when Sam thought it couldn't get any worse, Lara handed her a pen. Sam looked at it, her stomach dropping. _Oh, God._

Lara was wearing a determined expression, but Sam could see there was genuine fear on her face. "We'll get through it," Lara said, and then put a steadying hand on Sam's shoulder. "We'll get through this together."


	6. A Day in the Life - Lara, Sam, SFW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Can you do a story where Lara goes to the store to buy stuff, then goes home and pays some bills, then watches tv for a while and then goes to sleep. Then the next day she goes to the DMV to get her drivers license renewed, followed by going to the post office to get some stamps"
> 
> Yes. Yes, I can.

I put my camera on the bookshelf in hallway of our apartment, checked the frame and then stepped into it. My hair probably looked crap, but whatever, right? Part of reality TV is that not everyone looks great all the time. It makes it way more accessible and real if people look like they just woke up. And since it was like six-twenty-five in the morning on a Saturday, I was feeling _pretty_ accessible and real at that moment.

"Hey, guys," I said, smiling at the lens. "Wow, I sound like a smoker. This what I get for waking up at the crack of dawn, I guess. Anyway, I got a stack of emails and messages asking what Lara's _really_ like." I had a couple of them open and ready on my iPad, so I unlocked it and read off the screen. "' _Dear Sam_ ', says one, ' _We all know Lara Croft is this totally badass chick who can wreck whole entire armies of men. How does she even do that? What's her secret? Does she have some serious training regime? What does she eat for breakfast? It would be cool to see what a day in her life is like'_." I put the iPad down. "Well, folks," I grinned at the lens, "you demand and I deliver. Presenting a Day in the Life of Lara Croft."

I'd probably put a title on the screen right then, I thought.

I'd chosen six twenty-five for a reason, because on Saturdays Lara always gets up at six thirty to run on the treadmill. Just as I lifted the camera off the shelf, the door to Lara's room opened and she emerged in her gym gear. I pointed the camera at her. "Good morning, _Tomb Raider_."

She rolled her eyes over the camera at me and continued down the corridor. "Sam," she said neutrally. "What are you doing awake before midday?"

"Just ignore me like usual, okay?" I told her as I followed her. "Just act totally normal."

She glanced up at me as she plugged in the treadmill. "Okay…" she said suspiciously, and then she stepped up onto it and put her headphones in her ears.

"Lara used to run in the park," I narrated. "But after the whole _Tomb Raider_ thing, way too many people stop her for autographs and she can't get a proper run in. So she bought a treadmill and now she runs up here."

Being used to having cameras pointed at her, Lara just pressed a few buttons on the treadmill and then took off. While she was busy jogging away, I put the camera on the TV unit and went and got myself some cereal.

Then, I stood and ate it while I watched her. She looked pretty hot, I thought, examining her. Male viewers would totally want to see way better shots of her in skin-tight lycra. I abandoned my cereal and went to pick up the camera, walking over to her with it. I had her in a mid-shot when a bead of sweat ran down right in between her boobs. "Oh, wow," I said. "That's like porn, right there." I zoomed in on it.

Lara must have had the volume way down on her iPod, because she gave me a really strange look. "Why do I feel like you're ogling me?" she asked.

"You should have worn that crop-top thing," I said absently, checking out the hypnotic bounce of her cleavage in slow-motion. "For viewers, I mean."

"Right," she said slowly, and then upped the speed of the belt.

When she was done she wouldn't actually let me into the bathroom with her, even though I promised her I wouldn't put any shots in final cut that showed anything. "Out!" she told me, and closed the door in my face. Fortunately, she'd forgotten to take clothes with her into the bathroom, so I just camped by the door until she came out in a towel. It was worth it, because I got a great close-up of her giving me a _look_ through the lens, and then filmed her bare legs as they walked down the corridor and into her bedroom.

I turned the camera on myself. "Did you see those muscles?" I asked the camera. "I know, right? But she _always_ wears long pants so that's probably the most you'll ever see of them."

While she was getting dressed, I rushed into my room to quickly throw some clothes on, as well. When I was done, I caught her trying to furtively do up her boots and disappear out the door without me.

I pointed the camera at myself. "Lara thinks she's really good at sneaking around," I said. "Hint: she's not. I always catch her."

Lara was in the middle of zipping up a boot. "It's completely not my fault," she said, trying to defend herself. "You always know exactly when I would rather not be seen and then you pop up out of nowhere. I'm sure there's some ninja in your bloodline."

"Nope!" I said cheerfully, still filming her. "Just pure freelance journalist. So," I said, changing the subject. "Where are we going now?"

" _We_ are going on a perilous and terribly exciting journey to Sainbury's." She stood up, grinning. "I need tomatoes."

I laughed at what she'd said as she put on her coat. "Oh, come on!" I told her. "Put some drama into it!" I pointed the lens at myself. "She's on an _epic_ _quest_ for some organic tomatoes. They're the final ingredient she needs, and when she has them in her possession the cooking can begin!" She was chuckling with me as I went back to filming her. "So, are you making pasta napoletana? Wait, let me rephrase: oh, my God, can you _please_ make us pasta napoletana for lunch."

"Just 'Lara' is fine," she said with a smirk. "And I might. Are you going to put on your coat?"

I looked down at my t-shirt, and then outside at the rain. "Oh, right," I said, and hurriedly pulled it on so I could follow her.

Not that this'll come as a giant surprise given that we lived in England, but it was overcast and raining. Lara normally uses this really tame black umbrella. Fortunately, it was hidden in my room that week because there was far too much entertainment value in watching her carry around my old Sanrio one with _Kero Kero Keroppi_ print all over it.

I weathered being rained on for the sole purpose of getting a good shot of the _Tomb Raider_ holding it. She glanced over her shoulder at me. "This is _not_ my umbrella," she told the camera.

"Yeah," I said. "Lara's umbrella is blood red and shoots out of the barrel of a shotgun."

Sainsbury's did in fact have the epic organic tomatoes. "Hold them up… yeah, like that," I told Lara, who looked shyly around us at all the people who were trying to pretend they weren't watching. "Behold!" I said, although it barely came out because I was giggling too much. "The tomatoes we have been searching for!" I looked over the LCD. "Say something like that."

She crossed her arms nervously. "Don't you think it would be more in character for me to dig through the whole pile there and take some out from the bottom? I'm an archaeologist."

"But you're not _that kind_ of archaeologist," I pointed out. "At least, not anymore. Hey, I know, we should have brought your guns in here. You could have just laid into all the fruit that was blocking the tomato stand and then heroically rescued them from the carnage." I thought about it as we went to go pay. "Actually, you know, that would be totally hilarious. Especially if you could do it with a straight face."

She'd already put her tomatoes on the counter and was trying to not look sideways at a picture of her on a gossip rag next to the checkout. I filmed the cover and then picked it up. " _'Lonely Lara Croft'_ ," I read aloud in faux-serious voice. "' _"how do I get a man when they're all scared of me?': her tragic secret'."_

Lara scoffed. "I never said that," she told me, as if there was some off-chance I'd believe it.

I rolled my eyes at her. "Sweetie, I work in media," I reminded her. "I live this crap." I flipped to the story and had a brief glance through it. There was some complete fiction about her being desperate for love and turned down by every man she approached. "Please, as if any of these guys wouldn't give it to you in a heartbeat," I said, looking at the grainy pictures of the men Lara had supposedly been turned down by. "Someone should tell _The Sun_ you're completely frigid and don't want a boyfriend anyway."

She smacked me with her purse and the frame shook. "'Busy' is not the same as 'frigid'."

"Uh, hi," the checkout guy said to us. I panned over to him; he was probably about eighteen and his face was as red as the tomatoes he was weighing. "H-How are you today?"

I waved the paper at him. "You'd better watch out," I told him. "According to this Lara is desperate and horny. No man is safe."

I hadn't thought it was possible for him to get any redder, but I was wrong. The color came out just great on the screen.

Lara gave him a fiver and took the tomatoes, glaring at me. "Oh, my God, Sam!" she said, blushing a little herself, "that's enough! Leave the poor man alone." She accepted the change from him. "Sorry," she said.

"I love your movies," he blurted out instead of saying 'thank you'.

"Thanks," Lara said, and then turned to glare at me again because I was giggling again.

Back at home, Lara cornered me in the kitchen. "I'm not making that pasta unless you promise not to go around talking about my love life," she said. "As if the papers don't speculate enough already on it."

I put my hands up. "Okay, I get it," I said, because I did. I couldn't leave it alone, though, because it was too funny. "You're right. The truth would probably be pretty boring. I mean, who wants to read a story about the great Lara Croft's _actual_ love life?" I tried to keep a straight face. "Probably no one cares that you're left-handed."

She accidentally smacked the back of her head on the cupboard she'd been reaching into. " _Sam_!" she yelled at me as she stood up, rubbing the back of her head. "I told you that in confidence! It had better not end up on telly or on YouTube somewhere!"

I hopped up onto the kitchen bench, swinging my heels against one of the cupboards. "Yeah, yeah," I said, taking a cookie out of the jar and holding it between my lips while I fiddled with the settings on my camera. "Don't worry. I'll just laugh over that privately to myself sometimes." I took a bite and put the rest of the cookie on the counter, swallowing quickly and going back to my project. "Here's a little known fact about Lara Croft: she can actually cook."

Lara snorted, but she still didn't look that pleased with me. "I can cook _pasta_ ," she said. "That's hardly gourmet."

"And that udon thing," I reminded her, forgetting the name of it. "That's awesome, too."

Lara rolled up her sleeves and set to work on the tomatoes while the water was boiling. "It only seems like I can cook because _you_ can't make toast," she said. "Or even a hard-boiled egg."

It wasn't my fault Dad had a housekeeper and Mom didn't really eat. "All lies," I declared. "You're just trying to hide what a great housewife you'd make." I took another bite of my cookie and held the camera away so people wouldn't hear me chewing. "Besides, who needs cooking skills when you have a microwave?"

She walked over to the fridge, probably to get onions or something out, and stood there for a moment. "Shit," she said, removing a heart-shaped magnet and taking a bill off the front of it. "The electricity was due yesterday. Can you pay it? We'll forget if we just leave it here."

"What, like now?"

She looked pretty serious, so I hopped down off the bench and took it from her, sitting down at the table. Well, people _did_ want to know about Lara's ordinary life, and there wasn't anything much more domestic than paying household expenses. I panned the camera over it. "This is our electric bill," I said. "Pretty riveting stuff, huh? The only exciting thing is this," I zoomed in and focused on my name, which was apparently ' _Samantha Nahsimura', "_ Someone spelt my name wrong again. Now _that's_ news. Only the hard stories here, people." I paid the bill using my cell.

We ate our lunch in front of the TV, despite the fact there was basically nothing on. In the end, we ended up watching reruns of Oprah from that narrow window of time when she was really thin. Apparently back then it was revolutionary and not hopelessly mainstream to be 'in touch with your spiritual self'.

I filmed Lara's reaction to that stuff. It wasn't that Lara didn't believe in magic or anything – I mean, how could she not, right? – but all this soul-searching spirituality-religion stuff was _so_ not her thing. It showed on her face.

"So, tell me, Lara," I said in my Serious Oprah Voice. "Tell me when you first discovered your inner self. I myself was fourteen. I didn't even know what it meant to ask myself that question."

Her expression made me laugh. "Why does everything you say sound dirty?"

"Probably because you haven't gotten any in a million years," I shot back at her. "I actually _wasn't_ being dirty. I was asking the deep questions."

Even on the tiny LCD I could see she didn't look like she believed me. "The deep questions," she repeated. "Yes, I'm sure _your viewers_ are just so interested in hearing about what God means to me and whether or not I believe in the afterlife, or reincarnation, or whatever it is she's on about on telly."

She had a point. "Hah," I said. "You're right. The viewers are probably way more interested in what you're looking for in a man, so they can turn themselves into that."

She was still squinting at the TV. "Better break it to them that I'm not looking for a man," she said, and then panicked and added, "right now, that is." She turned a similar shade of red to the guy at Sainsbury's.

I laughed. "Whoa, you _do_ hate talking about your love life on camera," I said, getting a close up of those flushed cheeks. "That is one _hardcore_ blush."

"Shut up," she said, and then stood up and took our plates into the kitchen. While she put them in the dishwasher, I lay down across the whole length of the couch and reviewed some of the footage. This stuff was gold, seriously. People were just going to think she was the cutest thing ever. And those shots of her in a towel? If anyone wasn't totally crushing on her before they watched the video I was about to make, they would be at the end of it.

When Lara came back into the living room, there was no space for her on the couch. "Right," she said. "I suppose it's the floor for me, then?" She came and stood at the edge of the couch. "Come on, shove over."

"There's totally room," I told her, thinking she could probably sit at the other end under my legs. I lifted them.

"There's no table down there and I haven't finished my juice," she said. "And I won't fit up this end unless you particularly fancy me sitting on your f—" she inhaled sharply and didn't finish that sentence.

 _That_ made me laugh. "On my face, you mean?" I waggled my eyebrows at her, enjoying her discomfort. "I'm not sure _I'm_ the one who's supposed to 'fancy' that." Just to completely unsettle her, I hooked a hand around her thigh and pretended to try and pull her down on top of me. Her expression was priceless and, literally, my sides hurt from laughing at it. "You are _such_ a prude," I told her, sitting up and scooting over so she could sit down next to the table.

She didn't say anything, she just picked up the remote and channel surfed for what felt like forever. I had been giggling to myself and filming her when I realized there was absolutely no trace of humor on her face. She also was deliberately not looking at me. That was not a good sign.

I switched the camera off. "Hey," I said gently. "Look, I'm sorry if I go too hard on you about the whole no boyfriend thing. If it really bothers you, I can—"

"No…" she said, interrupting me. "It's not that."

"It's not?"

She looked at the remote control in her lap. For like a second or two I thought maybe she was going to say something really serious, but she just smiled. "I guess I'm still just getting used to this whole fame thing," she said, smiling wryly at me.

It didn't seem like something she'd be all weird about, but I guessed I probably didn't get what it was like for her. My family had been in the spotlight basically since I was born. "So you're not angry with me?"

She shook her head and patted her lap. "You want a head massage to prove it?"

What a question; I couldn't get on the floor fast enough. I sat with my back to the couch between her knees and then looked over my head at her, upside down. "I can film this, right?"

She shrugged, and then starting working on my scalp. This was _so_ awesome. I turned the LCD around so that I could get both my face and Lara's far above mine in the shot. "It is, like, the coolest thing ever to have a white friend who has Asian Hair Envy," I said. She yanked a lock of said hair.

While I had my eyes closed and was enjoying it, it occurred to me Lara had been pretty weird since that whole store thing and I second-guessed her being angry at me about teasing her. I had to stop messing with her, I decided, even though it was completely hilarious. Lara probably let me do it because we were best friends, but maybe it actually wasn't okay. I made a face. I hated the thought that I might actually be hurting her.

"Lara," I began, looking over my head again.

"You need to pluck your eyebrows," she told me cryptically.

I made a face. "I know," I said. "I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon. Anyway, I'm sorry I lay into you about the love life stuff. I am. I know you're not interested in dating now. The whole media being obsessed with your love life just makes you an easy target."

She watched the TV for a while before she swallowed and looked down at me. "Some things are just really hard for me to talk about," she said eventually. "But, yes, I'm not interested in anything to do with men at the moment."

I realized a little too late that the camera was still on, so I looked down at it again. "Did you hear that, boys?" I asked it. "You're out of luck. Lara's a career woman."

She sighed heavily. "I have that lecture to plan for Cambridge," she said, changing the subject. "I should probably think about actually doing it instead of spending all day procrastinating with you."

When she stood up, I wrapped my arms around her calves. "Hey, who said I was done with you?" I asked her, but she just smiled faintly at me and wandered off into her bedroom. I heard the door shut.

I stared at the doorway for a moment, and then picked up the camera. "Guess that's it for today," I told the lens. "When she shuts the door, it's, like, _hours_ before she comes out again."

She actually didn't come out for the rest of the day. Not for anything. Usually at like six or seven she got hungry and would wander into the kitchen and maybe cook us something, but not today. That only confirmed what I'd suspected about her being kind of upset with me.

I knocked on her door at about eight, but there was no answer. I had this split second where I imagined something awful like that she'd hung herself from the ceiling fan or been shot to death in her office chair, but I still managed to _not_ burst through her door. I just opened it gently and peeked inside. It was dark and it took a couple of seconds for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I saw her curled up asleep on top of her blankets, nestled among a broad spread of paper, books and her laptop which had already died. I couldn't help it, I had to get that scene on film. It was the most adorable thing on the planet.

Afterwards, I sat down on the edge of her bed and put a hand on her side. She stirred, and then opened her eyes, blinking tiredly at me. "I must have fallen asleep…" she said. "Wow, what time is it? I'll never get this thing finished."

I patted her hip. "Lara, your lecture isn't for like two weeks. Take the evening off for once. Just relax." She rolled onto her back and in the process knocked some of the books onto the floor. "See? It's a sign not to do any more writing tonight."

She laughed. "Okay, okay," she said eventually, and then something occurred to her. "You just filmed all of that, didn't you?"

I winced. "Would you totally kill me if I said yes?"

She laughed once. "I think I'd wonder who was on the edge of my bed if you _hadn't_."

I watched her rub her eyes. "C'mon. I'll tuck you in."

"What am I, five years old?" She laughed, but put her laptop on her desk and then crawled under the covers and let me do it, anyway. "I still have my bra on," she said after I'd carefully arranged the blankets around her. "I should probably take it off, but I'm just so comfortable." She paused. "Shit. You're filming."

I smirked. "Yup." I lay down on top of the covers next to her. "So what's on the cards for you tomorrow, Miss Croft?" I asked, turning the camera to face us both. "Isn't tomorrow night garbage night? I bet everyone's looking forward to seeing your big strong muscles flex as you take our heavy garbage bag down the stairs."

"There's that, and I need to get my driver's license renewed," she said. "I'm sure _that_ will be an exciting episode. Also I'm out of stamps."

I snorted. "Stamps. Who even sends _post_ anymore."

I felt a poke through the blankets. "It's Christmas soon. I just really like the whole idea of sending real cards to people." She snuggled deeper into the mattress. "Since you're here," she joked, "do you want to read me a story? I'm halfway through ' _Sing Me Home_ '."

I looked from her to the lens. "And there you have it, folks," I told the camera. "The terrifying Lara Croft: asking me to read her a bedtime story. Next week: I sing her a lullaby and make her a glass of warm milk."

"You'd burn the milk. I can see it now."

I switched off the camera. "I'm cutting that last part," I told her. "I would totally _not_ burn the milk. Do you need anything else, or should I just leave you alone now?"

She looked for a second like she was going to ask for something, but she changed her mind and shook her head. "No. I'm really comfy. Thanks."

I tried to figure out what she'd been about to ask for. I had been about to guess it was her Teddy Bear, but I caught sight of his little ears poking up above the blankets. If it wasn't that, maybe she was hungry but afraid of the atrocities I might commit against any food I tried to make for her? "Are you hungry?" I asked, anyway.

She shook her head. "It's fine," she said. "Go edit your video."

Wow, she knew me really well. "Okay," I said. "I promise I won't put that stuff in you didn't want me to."

"Thanks," she said, "it means a lot to me to know I can trust you."

She touched my hand, and it gave me butterflies. I looked down at our hands for a moment, confused about it. I supposed it was just really nice to have Lara opening up to me, because she didn't do that often. I felt kind of special being the one she told things to, because she was the only person in the whole world who really knew the first thing about me.

I stood up. "Sleep well," I said, and then went to go turn on my Macbook Pro. I was going to make the most awesome video ever, seriously. I had this idea about cutting some footage of Lara shooting and jump and blowing things up with that sweet image of her asleep on her bed.

Seriously, if anyone _wasn't_ in love with Lara, I was totally going to fix that up right now.


	7. Aerodynamic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Can you like make a thing Where Lara walks in on Sam duct-taping the ends of her clothes to her body to make herself more aerodynamic for their next expedition like a hunter from left 4 dead" – Sam, Lara (POV) - SFW
> 
> Yes.

The hotel room actually turned out to be a large art-deco-style apartment. It was a little stuffy inside, so I opened the big bay windows and settled down in an armchair next to them with the iPad. Sam had disappeared into the bathroom to sample the complementary toiletries and enjoy the enormous shower. It meant the telly was off for once and that was a relief.

The article was actually pretty interesting; it was written by a young student of archaeology who was studying at Cambridge but specializing in Australian mythology. It lacked the long, drawn-out sentences I normally had to struggle through and read very easily from beginning to end. Despite that, the content wasn't that interesting to me. I did note some similarities between Aboriginal mythology and the Maori stories Jonah started on about when we were drunkenly inventing stories for his many tattoos. Even the memory of sloshed Jonah imitating various deities wasn't enough to rescue myths about zillions of rivers and mountains, though.

I reached the end of the article and closed it.

It was then that I realised I never normally managed to reach the end of anything without being interrupted. Or without needed to focus on ignoring the sound of women shrieking at each other on reality shows, or without Sam leaning over my shoulder, telling me she was bored and asking me what I was reading. It was suspiciously quiet, and showers didn't last _that_ long.

Where was Sam?

I looked over toward the door dividing the living area and the bedroom and en suite. I thought I could hear the sounds of something straining to do something and not liking the result. The bed creaked, and then I heard something solid be put down on a flat surface. What on earth was she doing?

I stood up to investigate, discarding the iPad on the cushion behind me.

As I rounded the corner, I spotted Sam sitting on the edge of the bed with a roll of duct tape and a pair of scissors, wrapping it all around the ends of her sleeves and pants. She even had some around her elbows and knees. She saw me in the doorway and grinned, standing up to show me her work.

I just stared at her. "Have you been watching the Japanese fashion channel again?"

She gave me a look. "Actually I was watching this cool documentary on Parkour, you heard of it?" I shook my head. "It was about these guys who created an obstacle course out of a construction site in central Chicago. They were doing all these amazing tricks as they ran through it, it was awesome." She was talking animatedly again, the way she always did when she was excited. That, plus the duct tape on her wrists… what a sight. "Anyway, one of them was saying he could get much higher when he wore tighter clothes and taped the ends to his body. Something about aerodynamics."

I watched her. "So you taped your ankles and wrists to be aerodynamic?" She didn't correct me, so I pointed out, "Sam, you wear the tightest clothes on the planet, I swear you're more aerodynamic than those swimmers wearing those banned bodysuits."

She stood up and did a little spin for me to display her handywork. "Yeah, but now I'm even _more_ aerodynamic. Maybe now I'll be able to do those vault-things you do to get on top of buildings."

"You could just do some push-ups and lunges, you know."

She sat back down on the bed. "Yeah, but this duct tape does two things," she said. I waited for her to continue. "You're always saying to put practicality over fashion, especially when we go on expeditions. And you know how I was telling you about those bird-eating spiders Australia has?" She swung her taped ankles up onto the bed. "Well," she said, looking smug and showing me nothing could get into them. "When you have them crawling all over the inside of your cargos, _you're_ going to wish you were as aerodynamic as _I_ am."


	8. Trash & Treasure - Lara, Sam (prompt) - SFW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Pugletto, who is art-trading with me for Lara/Natla art. She said, "Write me a pugfic!" The tacos are also for Pug, but she shouldn't eat them unless she wants hepatitis.

"I swear it used to be around here somewhere," Sam was saying, thumbing through a map on her iPhone. She stopped on the corner, looking around and then back at her phone. "It's supposed to be here!"

I looked about us. It was one of those awful grey days in London where it was on the cusp of raining. I kept thinking I felt raindrops on my face, but it was never enough to bother hunting around in my bag for my brollie. Despite the fact it wasn't really raining, the wind had picked up and was blowing right through my scarf. I really would much rather have been home inside than hunting around in the dodgy end of the city for a shop, even if it was an antique and rare bookstore.

"It probably closed down," I said. "Don't worry, I'm sure they have a shop online. If not, maybe we could try Amazon."

Sam walked purposefully up to a traffic light, walking around the pole and looking up it. She made a frustrated noise. "Apple Maps _never_ works in London," she said. "These maps are hopeless. I'm going Android next time." I must have been looking at her blankly, because she leaned back towards me, showing me the screen on her iPhone, and then pointed upwards. "It doesn't even have us on the right street!" A couple of small droplets landed on her screen and she wiped them off and took my hand. "Come on," she said, leading me around the corner.

Because of the weather, there was no one around the area. I would actually have preferred to not be around there, either: I was in the middle of writing an article for a journal and it was so close to being finished. I wanted to go back home, turn on the heater and finish it. It was so cold out here that I would have put my hands inside the sleeves of my jumper if Sam hadn't been leading me by one of them.

"Perhaps we should go home," I suggested. "I think it's going to rain."

Sam snorted. "If we stayed home because it was raining in this country, we'd _never_ leave the house."

As she said that, a big fat drop of rain got me in the eye. It was closely followed by several more. Before we knew it, they were covering the street. Sam shoved her phone in her pocket. "Did you bring the umbrella?"

I nodded. "But I don't want to open my bag with my phone and the iPad in it." We were beside a laneway that backed onto some little restaurants that weren't open yet, and there was an awning over one of their doorways. "There!" I said, this time being the one to drag Sam underneath it.

We squished into the doorway together while I unzipped my bag and felt around in it. The doorway was beside a huge rubbish bin, and it smelt like a mixture of week-old yum cha and stale taco meat. There was even wilted chopped lettuce around the base of the bin.

"Do you hear that?" Sam was saying while I was trying to figure out which bloody pocket I'd put the compact brollie in.

"I can't hear anything except the rain," I told her, unzipping the front pocket.

She was giving me a strange look while she listened. "No, I swear to god I can hear something in that bin."

She rushed out from under the awning over to the big rubbish bin, but she couldn't get the lid off it by herself. I watched her struggle with it for a few seconds while the rain pelted down on her and then felt awfully guilty for letting her try to do that on her own. Dropping my bag in the doorway, I jogged over to her, bracing my shoulder against the lid until it creaked in protest and swung open. With the lid off, it smelt even worse.

Ignoring that, Sam put a boot on the steel frame and stepped up, leaning over inside it. "There's something moving in here!" she told me, and starting tossing all manner of rubbish out. I watched a half-cut lettuce, some stale taco shells and a few empty take-away boxes fly past me as I stood beside her, getting soaked. So much for bothering to straighten my hair this morning.

"This is London," I reminded her. "It's probably rats. Or maybe the pigeons have finally learnt how to infiltrate rubbish bins."

She stopped rifling through the rubbish and was completely still. "Oh, my God," she said after a moment of silence, but I couldn't see what she was looking at. "Okay, it's not a spy pigeon." She looked down at me. "You'll never guess what's in here!"

"Salmonella?"

She rolled her eyes and looked excitedly back into the bin. "Come on!" she said in a baby voice. "Come on, come here, boy!"

What on was she…

I put the toe of my boot on the framing myself and climbed up next to her. She had her arms outstretched. On the other side of the bin, just out of reach, a tiny little head was poking out of a chewed-up garbage bag. I couldn't tell what it was at first from the shape of its face, but then it sneezed.

It was a _puppy._ It had a really strange face, one of those flat-noses with bulging eyes and too much skin. I felt kind of bad thinking a tiny puppy was ugly, but I couldn't help it. It was ugly, but it was also little and helpless. "Is that a pug?" I asked her.

"Uh, huh!" she said, and managed to coax it over the debris and assorted rubbish into her arms. I then stepped back off the side of the bin and let her hand it to me as she climbed down herself.

It was cuter when I could see all of it, but there was still something horribly surprised about its expression. Its stay in the bin had also left it smelling _awful._ "Who would throw a puppy into a rubbish bin?" I asked, brushing a piece of soggy tomato off its back. I checked the inside of one of its ears. "No microchip."

Sam was dancing around opposite me, desperate for me to give the puppy back to her. "Isn't it _adorable_?" she asked me. "It's so tiny!"

I passed it to her, and she received it from me with the same level of care as if she were being given a newborn baby. "Hello, little guy!" she said. "You must be so scared and so cold…" She looked at me. "Can you give me your scarf?"

I narrowed my eyes at her, but did as she told me. She wrapped it all around the puppy and cradled it in her arms. I was so completely wet through anyway I supposed it didn't really matter that now I was wet _and_ had a cold neck.

She walked back under the awning, jogging the puppy as if it was her own child. It was actually really endearing. I just stood next to the bin in the rain and watched her; I knew what was coming next.

"He's _so_ adorable," Sam was saying and when she looked up at me, I could already see guilt. "Lara…"

"Sam…" I said neutrally, wondering how long it would take her to actually ask the question.

She winced. "I know we're not supposed to have animals in your apartment, but he's _so tiny_ …" she said, "and it's not like we can't hide him anywhere…"

I crossed my arms and _looked_ at her.

"We're moving soon, anyway!" she said. "Please…?"

It was useless arguing with Sam when she'd made up her mind. As soon as I'd passed that puppy to her I'd known it was going to end up coming home with us. I sighed. Despite its really odd face and tubby little body it _was_ cute. "Alright," I said. "But before you let him loose in the flat let me clean up all the periodicals I've got all over the floor."

Sam ventured out into the rain again to throw her other arm around me and kiss my cheek. "I love you!" she announced – I'd grown familiar to hearing it every time I did something she wanted me to. She then looked back down at the puppy. "Did you hear that, little guy? You've got a new home!" She dragged me back under the awning. "What are we going to call him?" I'd never had a dog before, or any pets, actually. I wasn't sure she was really asking for my input anyway, because she was already looking thoughtful. "I always think it's kind of funny when you give these tiny dogs really proper names. We should give him a totally British name, something really 'posh'."

Posh? I looked down at the puppy. Its little bulging eyes stared back at me. One of them looked a bit lazy and I wasn't sure it was actually pointed at me. "My parents used to have this really proper butler when I was a little girl."

She looked up at me, some of her excitement fading. I never talked about my parents, really. Or my childhood. "Yeah?"

"His name was Winston," I said. "And he _always_ wore a suit."

"Winston," Sam repeated, trying it out as she looked down at him wrapped in my scarf. "Oh, my God. That's so hilarious. _Look_ at him. He's got such a weird little face for a name like 'Winston'. We should _totally_ call him that."

When the rain eased, we left the awning and headed back to where Sam had parked. I had to drive, because Sam insisted that we couldn't wake Winston once he'd gone to sleep in her arms. As I was pulling away from the curb, I noticed a faded sign over a little single-level shop near the corner where we'd been sheltering. _Blackwells Rare Reads_ , I was able to make out. It was the store Sam had been trying to find.

While we were stopped at a red light, I looked from the sign and the beautiful old leather-bound tomes in the window to Sam in the passenger seat. She was gazing adoringly at Winston as he slept – snoring. Oh, God, I thought, now I'll have _two_ snorers in my flat.

When the light turned green, I didn't mention that I'd seen the book shop. I just drove us all home.


	9. We All Have Our Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You should write a story about Lara and Sam having a baby! Maybe when you're not too busy? :)"
> 
> Okay. This took me 29 minutes.
> 
> I'm guessing you want fluff, right? Unfortunately, the beautiful thing about prompts is I can take your lovely, sweet ideas AND TURN THEM INTO PAIN.
> 
> Post-Yamatai pre-slash/gen. Something a little different.

We all have our demons.

I'd spent a decade avoiding mine until I was forced to come face-to-face with them, a gun in my hands and many innocent lives depending on me standing strong. I'm not sure how I gauge that success, to be honest. So many people died, so many. I still wonder if I'd been able to sort my head out faster if they'd be alive. I just don't know. I'll never know, it's one of those things.

Sam had initially been pretty cheerful and optimistic, but after all the media coverage slowed down and we went back to England, she changed. She basically abandoned her flat and stopped paying the rent, and on the odd occasion when she actually came home at night, she slept on my sofa.

I don't really know what she went through at Yamatai. As awful as what happened to me was, _I_ got the chance to face down my captors and I defeated them. Sam never have that chance, she was just dragged around by Mathias and Whitman and depended on me to save her. I rescue her again, a thousand times over. But things might have been so different for her back in England if she'd saved herself.

I wanted to be there for her. She's my _best friend._ I love her with all my heart and she's basically the only family I have left. So I shared my food with her, cleaned up after her when she'd had one too many I picked her up from wherever dingy laneway she was 'partying' in.

One night I'd woken up at maybe three in the morning because I heard something happening in the living room. When I went to investigate, Sam was sitting on my couch, head in her hands and blood all up her arm. I panicked and rushed up to her, but she waved me away. "You look like a Disney Princess compared to me," she said cryptically. "I bet my dad wishes _you_ were his daughter." Later I found out that her father had got wind of the fact she'd had been evicted from her flat and called her up to have a go at her. She'd been upset, gone drinking and God knows what else, and then crashed her car into a stone fence just outside of town.

I was okay at first, but as the weeks past I realised I couldn't do it. I couldn't watch Sam destroy herself when I knew the sweet, funny and intelligent woman she really was. I tried to bring it all up with her so many times, but each time she'd find a way to dismiss me and then disappear.

It all escalated one week when she left and didn't come back for five days. She even left her phone in my kitchen. I'd been completely beside myself with worry about her, but this time I couldn't take a gun and a bow and climb up a mountain. I had to wait for a knock on my door and two policemen to escort her back inside my flat.

They were talking to me, but I didn't care what they were saying. I threw my arms around Sam and burst into tears. She didn't respond at all. She was like a zombie.

After the officers had gone, I sat her down on the sofa and went to make her a cup of team. She held it in her lap and stared blankly at it.

I was initially so happy that she was alive and okay, but when she didn't respond to anything I was saying or doing, I just got so angry with her.

"Are you listening to me?" I asked her. "I was _terrified_ that those police would knock on my door and instead of bringing you in, they'd tell me they'd found your body in a—"

"I'm fucking pregnant, okay?" She looked up from her tea.

I hadn't slept, so it took me a few seconds to process what she'd said. "What?"

She exhaled and looked back down at her tea. I had been so upset and so worked up and I found it really difficult to clear my head and step back. "Who did you…?"

She laughed humourlessly, interrupting me. "Your guess is as good as mine."

 _That_ made me really angry again. Was there any way in which she _wasn't_ trying to ruin her life after I'd gone to so much trouble to save it? "You're having unprotected sex with _strangers_?"

She shrugged. "If you're going to go the whole lecture on me, can you getting it over with already? I don't care. I told Dad yesterday. You can't possibly say anything worse than he did."

God, I could imagine what her father had said. He was _really_ traditional about family, and just so careful about his reputation. Sam's behaviour was going to cause big issues for him.

I sank down on the sofa beside her, also staring at my lap. It was almost too big a bombshell to even get my head around. "I'm going to Beijing next week," I said. "What are you going to do? Didn't you sign on for that big documentary the BBC is running from August?"

She nodded slowly. "I have no fucking idea what I'm going to do," she said eventually. "Look at me." She held her arms out. There were little bruises on them; I didn't want to know how they'd got there. "I wish I could just put the whole thing on hold and worry about it next year or something."

"Are you _actually_ considering keeping it?" I didn't mean to sound so awfully judgmental, but you have to understand how she was like at that point. She was a mess, she couldn't even look after herself.

"Just look at me," she repeated. "I'm sleeping on your couch. I'm eating your food. I'm doing stupid, crazy things that are stressing you out and that's _after_ you literally saved my life. I'm totally queen of the World's Worst Friends club."

"That's not what I think about you," I said honestly.

She shook her head, sighing again. "Well, maybe not yet…" she said, and then looked up at me with this awfully intense expression.

"What?" I asked her, worried about what she was going to say.

"I think I'm about to take the cake, seriously," she said, and swallowed. "Lara, I'm going to keep it."


	10. Don't Wait Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Anonymous asked: Fluff plz"
> 
> Don't Wait Up - Lara, Sam – SFW
> 
> Pre-Yamatai pre-slash.
> 
> Completed in 47 Minutes

I'd been staking out Lara's apartment for her _all day_. She took so long to get back I even got hungry and was forced to eat her 99% fat free yoghurt. While I was standing at the refrigerator with the tub in one hand and a soup spoon in the other, I had this sudden thought that maybe she'd hooked up with that guy from Civilizations after all. Aside from actually _calling_ Roth to make sure they weren't on some impulse trip to the Amazon or whatever (he was in that generation that had some weird aversion to text messaging), I just had to wait.

After like maybe ten minutes, I decided calling was okay.

Roth answered. "Hullo, Sam…" he sounded a bit confused. And he should be, because I think Lara only gave him my number for emergencies.

Well, this was kind of an emergency. Lara had been MIA for like _three hours_ now. "Hi," I said. "Is Lara with you?"

"Should she be?"

"Well, I don't know. She's been gone for _ages_. I thought maybe you knew where she went." I had another spoonful of that god-awful water-yoghurt and made a face.

"You know what she's like. She's probably just gone off searching for a periodical that's only in print."

I did know what she was like. She was usually at home whenever I wanted her to be and if not, she answered my text messages. Especially when they were _urgent_. "She didn't mention any guys lately, did she?"

Roth sighed. "Lara doesn't tell me about her love life, Sam. And I don't ask."

I scrunched my face up, half because of the yoghurt and half because of Roth not having any juicy details. "Okay, thanks," I said, and hung up.

As I did so, I heard Roth sigh again and say, "Alright, Sam… Bye."

I abandoned the refrigerator and went and lay on Lara's bed. There was no point in calling Alex, because he'd freak and launch an enormous search party for her, and there was _no way_ Lara would tell him if she were seeing someone, anyway.

While I was lying there, worrying about what Lara was secretly doing, I saw a really cute sweater hanging on the closet. It was _really_ cute.

Lara came home later that afternoon with a small shopping bag and singing aloud to her iPod as she closed the door. She nearly had a heart attack when she saw me, dumping her shopping and yanking out her earbuds. "Sam!" she said, totally busted. She then squinted at me. "Is that my new jumper?"

I looked down my front. "I'm just wearing it in for you," I said, and then went to investigate her bag. "What's in there?"

"I've been thinking about buying a carpet python, so I decided to do it."

My eyes just about jumped out of my head. " _Really?"_

She deadpanned. "No. It's groceries."

"Oh," I said. I'd quite liked the idea of the python. "Where have you been?"

She hung up her coat. "At the supermarket." When I looked like I completely didn't believe her, she added, "And you've been here the whole time, haven't you?"

"I don't think the _whole_ time," I said, thinking it was only a little bit of a lie. "I just had something really important to tell you and I wanted to tell you in person."

For a fraction of a second, she looked _really_ freaked out. "Before you say anything, would you like a brew?" she said, trying to hide that expression as she walked past me. "I have an Indian blend that's supposed to be really nice."

I didn't really get it the whole paranoid thing about the important news. "It's nothing serious," I said and then followed her into the kitchen while she filled the electric jug. "Guess what."

She gave me a look.

" _Fine_ ," I said. "My submission got accepted into _Royales Film Festival_. Does this call for a celebration, or what?"

 _That_ , she gave me a big smile for, looking suddenly far more relaxed. "That's great," she said, sounding like she genuinely meant it as she switched on the jug. "But I still don't understand why you couldn't tell me that over the phone."

I hopped up onto the kitchen bench beside the jug. "Uh, because we need to celebrate! Also I watched a YouTube video on how to fishtail braid and my hair isn't long enough." I ate a sugar cube out of the tin. "What did you think I was going to say?"

She flinched, going to the refrigerator for milk. "Never mind," she said. "It's important—" She made a frustrated noise and stood up, holding the nearly empty yoghurt container. "I thought you hated this stuff?"

"I do," I said. "But I was hungry and it was either that or the weird blue cheese that tastes like it should have been thrown out like months ago. Or years. Also you haven't told me where you were." I turned a hard stare on her. "Is it that guy from Civilizations?"

The expression she gave me kind of answered that question for itself. "No," she said. "I've already told you no. And no to that other man you think I'm interested in at The North Face, as well." She put the teabags in to soak. "I'm not going to date at the moment, so you can stop asking me about boys."

I shrugged. "I have this weird fear that one day you're going to date someone and I'm not going to find out until you're like, married to him and pregnant with his three children." At her frown, I said, "You've got to admit, you're pretty quiet on this stuff."

"I'm quiet because there's absolutely nothing to report," she said. "Do you want daily updates on that?"

I kind of did, actually. I didn't say anything about it, though. I just accepted my cup and then let her tell me all the boring details about the tea that I was drinking.

The next morning, I woke up to a text message. I rolled over, half-awake, and checked my phone. " _Just wanted to let you know that I'm lying in my bed. Alone."_

I laughed. I had intended to text her back, but I fell asleep again and woke up closer to noon and another text message. " _I'm at uni in a very boring geology tute. Also, I'm still single._ "

Early afternoon, I got up and when I walked out of the shower there was another one waiting for me. " _A man just asked me what time it was. Does that mean we're dating? Y/N."_

In the late evening while I was sitting in front of my Powerbook and trying and failing to make the sound sync properly with a video I was working on, she sent another. " _I'm at home, all alone._ " It was followed quickly by, " _By the way, you never braided my hair and I just washed it."_

I looked at my computer screen and the annoying track that wasn't cooperating with me. I could take a break. "Okay, _I'm coming over,"_ I texted back, and then thought for a second before sending another message. It was pretty funny, I decided. "' _Someone just texted me to tell me to come over. Don't wait up, I'll probably stay the night_ '."

While I was trying to decide which shoes to wear, she replied. " _It makes me stupidly happy that you're talking about me for once._ "

I stared at the phone for a moment with a big grin plastered across my face and with butterflies in my stomach. Wow, I needed to get a grip. Having Lara share stuff with me wasn't _that_ amazing, was it? She was my best friend, she was _supposed_ to share this love life stuff with me.

Whatever, I couldn't think about it now. I had a train to catch.


	11. Three's a Crowd 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "anonymous asked: Prompt: first lara's lesbian relationship (?)"
> 
> "anonymous asked: LARA'S FIRST LESBIAN RELATIONSHIP AND SAM'S THERE BEING ALL JEALOUS :3"
> 
> Three's a Crowd - Sam (POV), Lara/OC - SFW
> 
> 118 minutes

Okay, I feel the need to declare something here so you don't get the wrong idea: I am _totally_ okay with the fact Lara's gay. It's fine. Actually, it's better than fine, it's kind of cool. I know Lara will say I kind of freaked out when she told me; but that was _so_ _not_ what happened.

It was like a year ago. She went through this whole process of stressing about telling me for weeks where she wasn't answering her phone and she was locking her bedroom door. Then, she called this serious 'family' meeting where she sat me down at our miniature kitchen table and couldn't even make eye-contact with me. Just so you know, I'm kind of messy, and I had been expecting this whole thing was over the us living together situation. I had been expecting her to say, "Look, we're best friends, but I just can't live with you," so I'd been working myself up over it. I even wrote her a list of reasons why living with me was awesome.

When she finally blurted out, "Sam, I'm gay," I had already basically been crying. I was so surprised and so happy that she still wanted to live with me that I just bawled my eyes out from shock.

Naturally, Lara freaked out and locked herself in her room and wouldn't come out for what felt like a year (but was probably just a few hours). She doesn't believe me that I was crying because I was happy about not being turfed out, though. She thinks I was lying to her about the house thing to make her feel better.

So, yeah, Lara's a lesbian. But it never mattered anyway, because she just didn't date people.

Until she did, and then it _did_ matter, but not because I'm some placard-waving bigot.

On Tuesday, Lara came home late. Not that late, but late. She normally catches the seven-oh-five after playing Katniss on the university oval and is home by seven-thirty, gushing something about how many targets she hit. This time, though, she wasn't home until eight-thirty.

An hour was too long for a stopover at the local supermarket, and all the rest of the stores around us were closed. She wasn't shopping, and the library closed at six.

It was suspicious. What was even more suspicious was the huge secret smile she had on her face while she was taking off her boots at the door. She looked delirious about something.

"What?" she asked me pleasantly when she saw I was staring at her from the couch, nursing a scalding-hot poptart.

"You're smiling," I observed. Normally I love it when Lara smiles, but not when I'm not the cause of it.

That made her blush a little, and her smile grew even wider. "Yeah," she said. When it was clear I wanted more information, she said, "A new girl joined The Sisters. We partnered up for points and we got along really well, so she invited me out for dinner afterward." She stood up, beaming. "Anyway, she's dead keen on Egyptian Archaeology, and she invited me along to the Royal Museum's exhibition on Saturday!"

I think I was supposed to be excited for her. I wasn't. "Why!" I said flatly.

She looked somewhat surprised. "Uh, I think we went through this last year," she said. "Anyway, her name's Mariko. She's a history major at UL. Final year."

 _Mariko_? "She's Japanese?"

Lara's eyebrow flickered. "Yes? So are you, remember?"

" _Exactly_ ," I said, and then sat forward on the couch. This was _not_ good. "Is she gay?"

Lara ducked into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of milk. "I suppose," she said, wandering back into the living room and sitting beside me with it. "I didn't exactly give her the fifth degree while we were trying to eat." She hunted for the remote.

"But you must have been able to tell somehow," I accused her. "Did she kiss you?"

" _Sam!"_ Lara said. "I know you're only doing the Concerned Friend routine about someone who's interested in me, but I _promise_ you she's just lovely. Now," she looked down at the remote which she'd rescued from between the cushions, "isn't Operation Repo on now?"

I stared at the side of her head for a good five minutes until the nutjobs on TV distracted me. 'Lovely', was she? Well, I had to see this 'Mariko' for myself.

I was up at nine a.m. on a Saturday, which is a pretty amazing for someone who never got to bed before three a.m. on a Friday. I was completely hungover, too, but it was nothing that two Red Bulls and a greasy croissant wouldn't fix.

Lara had already left, which meant I needed to get my game on and get out of the door. I had been planning to catch the train but I was _so_ late that in the end I just ran out in front of a taxi instead. Fortunately it screeched to a stop before it mowed me down. "Royal Museum," I told the driver as I forced my way inside it, and then turned to the passenger already in the cab. "Sorry," I said. "It's an emergency. My best friend is about to make a _terrible_ mistake."

Neither of them made a fuss which was great, and I got dropped a block from the Museum, the opposite side to the station. There was a café there, and it was the _perfect_ stakeout point. I sat out the front and took out my camera. "HD digital zoom 50x," I said and lovingly stroked it. "You're _my_ one true love." I held the camera up towards the entrance to the museum.

While I was working away at croissant number two and coffee number one, I examined the whole front steps of the Museum for someone who looked Japanese. There were a few Asian girls on the grass out front, but none of them were screaming _Japanese_ at me.

I did see Lara come out of the entrance to the Tube, though. Before she rounded the fence to the stairs, she fixed her hair and agonised over whether the top button on her shirt should be open or closed.

"Closed," I said to myself, and a couple at the table next to me gave me a weird look. In the end, she settled on 'open', and that made me even more worried.

On the stairs, she stood looking around for a few seconds and then waved at someone. I panned quickly over to the girl she was waving at and double-took. Mariko didn't look Japan-Japanese at all. I mean, when I zoomed right in she kind of _did_ look Japanese, but she was wearing jeans and sneakers and a plain grey scoop-neck t-shirt with Cons. There were no cute little skirts, weird layers of fabric or super-girly bags. She just looked like any English university student; she must been here for a while.

They had this awkward moment where Lara went to hug Mariko and she wasn't expecting it but let Lara do it, anyway. Lara looked mortified. Actually, it was kind of cute. Mariko put her hand on Lara's arm for a moment, stepping in towards her. I could see she was commenting on shirt. For about half a second I saw her look down, it, too.

"Damn it, Lara!" I hissed at the LCD panel. "I _told_ you to button it up!"

"Can I help you?" a waiter asked me pointedly, distracting me from my furor.

I looked up at him, annoyed. Lara and Mariko were already walking up the stairs which meant I had to high tail it up there. "No," I said. "Actually, you can't." I gave him a handful of notes that had been in my pocket and rushed over towards the museum. I couldn't count money at time like this.

Unfortunately, I'd given all my change to him so when I had to pay entrance at the Museum, I was the only person in the line paying my five pounds by credit card I swear to God it felt like it took ten minutes; I was going to lose them. The attendant pretended not to mind and gave me a map once it had gone through. "Where's all the old Egyptian stuff?" I asked her, remembering Lara had mentioned something about Mariko liking all that

"The Tutankhamen exhibit is in the East Wing, here," she marked it on my map.

"Thanks," I said, and then took off up the wide corridor.

I found Mariko and Lara side-tracked in seventeenth century India, instead. I wasn't close enough to hear what they were saying, but they were laughing about something together and Mariko was animatedly telling some story. Lara wasn't really listening, although she was pretending to. When Mariko got to the punch-line, Lara laughed politely. For a second I was secretly smug about the fact Lara wasn't listening and didn't actually find her funny, until Lara managed to suddenly get enough courage to reach out and take Mariko's hand. _That_ must have been what had been distracting her; she was stressing about doing it.

Mariko looked down at their hands, then at Lara, and smiled. Lara _blushed_ , and I tripped over some lady's handbag that had randomly appeared on the floor in front of me. "Sorry," I told her, and then kept following them.

They did eventually end up checking out Tutankhamen. Mariko got increasingly excited as they approached the East Wing and by the time they made it through the doorway she was practically gushing. She was talking so loudly _I_ could hear it. I didn't care much about the stuff she was babbling on about, but I _did_ notice she had a slight accent. Lara looked absolutely charmed by it.

Whatever, I thought. _I_ could do a seriously decent Japanese accent if _that's_ what Lara really wanted to listen to. She didn't need to outsource.

They spent absolutely ages wandering around the wing and I was getting sick of hearing random facts about various Pharaohs. Lara wasn't, though. In fact, she looked really disappointed when they reached the end, until Mariko suggested they grab some lunch and eat it on the grass out the front.

This stank of a date that neither of them wanted to end. If they were experienced daters like me and not obsessive archaeology nerds, they would know that second dates should be in the evening. That way when the date is over, you can invite the person around to your house.

I thought about that.

On second thoughts, it was fucking _great_ that it was happening at midday on a Saturday afternoon. All that broad daylight was the antithesis to women taking off their clothes.

Lunch turned out to be chicken wraps and green iced tea. I couldn't have planned more boring food if I'd brainstormed 'tame lunches' as a topic for a month. They were pretty boring on the lawn, too. I mean, not that I was actually hoping they'd stick their tongues down each other's throats or something, but for the large majority of their time, they just leaned back on their elbows and talked.

I had returned to my perfect stakeout point for something fried, but spent the whole time not eating it and staring at my LCD and trying various settings to see how much detail I could get.

When I got the frame perfect and I had a really great view of them, I discovered what I _thought_ was boringness was actually them both freely ogling each other whilst talking about something unrelated. I zoomed in on Mariko's chest and squinted at the screen. They were bigger than mine; I immediately hated her even more.

I got sick of waiting in agony for them to jump each other, and went to use the bathroom at the café.

I had been sitting in there staring at my knees and wondering if I was missing the exact moment when Lara developed some hormones like a normal university student, when the door to the toilet opened and two women thick in conversation poured in.

Lara's voice I recognised immediately. I sat upright. At least I was in the end stall near the wall so Lara couldn't see my shoes, because they were too fabulous to not immediately give me away.

"But they'll know we didn't buy anything!" Lara was saying, but she was laughing. "I have this awful image of that grumpy waiter marching right in here and throwing us out unless we agree to buy some coffee!"

Mariko was laughing, too. "Then we'll just have to stay and have coffee," she said. The statement was loaded.

Lara stopped laughing. "I'd like that," she said, and I could hear she was still smiling. "But I've got this horrible paper due in on Monday that I haven't started."

She was lying. She finished that paper a week ago. Some small part of me hoped that she wasn't enjoying herself as much as she sounded like she was.

"Is that your polite way of turning me down?" Mariko asked, but by the sound of it she already knew Lara's answer.

Say 'yes' anyway, Lara, I mentally willed her. Yes, yes…

She ignored my attempt at psychic intervention. "Not at all," Lara said. "I had a great time."

"How great?" Mariko asked playfully.

If I leaned down in the stall, I could see their feet were pretty close together. I stood up and pulled up my pants, but I didn't flush the toilet yet. I didn't want them to know I was there. I put my eye against the crack in the doorframe.

Mariko had walked Lara right up against the tiles on the side wall and they were both grinning ear-to-ear at each other, arms around each other's waists. On the one hand, it was so adorable watching two baby lesbians try and figure the whole dating thing out. On the other hand, just, no. She was _so_ not about to get with this girl.

I toyed with the idea of opening the door right then and just walking between the two of them totally casually on my way to the basin.

While I was seriously considering that, Mariko leaned in and kissed Lara. That girl was _really_ lucky I didn't have a gun, seriously. Or know how to use a gun. I would have topped her right there. I was pretty unhappy about all this giggling and batting of eyelashes, but I was _super_ unhappy about the fact she was now also getting it on with Lara.

After I'd spent a few seconds watching them, I had at least one of my questions answered. It was a totally awkward kiss which kind of implied they hadn't kissed before. They got into it pretty quickly though, and after like maybe twenty seconds they were leaning heavily against each other, making out right there in some wholesome café's women's.

I watched Lara's hand very closely. It was tracking a dangerous route up Mariko's back and when the door burst open and some poor middle-aged woman interrupted them, her thumb had already been on the side of one of Mariko's boobs.

Thank you, old woman, I thought. I am _so_ paying for whatever you just had.

Lara and Mariko jerked away from each other, trying desperately to look innocent even though it was totally clear what they'd just been doing. I'd never actually seen Lara look flustered; it kind of suited her, actually. Her cheeks were bright red and I could see how quickly she was breathing. I wanted to see more of it, but the old woman walked right up to the cubicle next to me and got straight to work. I scrunched up my nose.

I waited for a while until I couldn't hear Lara or Mariko anymore, and then flushed the toilet and made my way to the basin.

I had been rolling up my sleeves and wondering how I was going to ruin Lara's next date when I heard, " _Sam_?" That was Lara's voice. I looked up from my sleeves, my heart pounding. She was standing at the basin, staring open-jawed at me. Mariko was obviously already waiting outside. "What are _you_ doing in—did you follow me?"

I grit my teeth. Busted. "I got lost," I began, "on my way to tell you that I don't want you to date that girl."

She looked surprised, and then glared at me. "Sam," she said. "I thought you were okay with… everything."

I rolled my eyes. "It's not _that_ ," I said, pushing her out the way of the basin with my hip so I could wash my hands. "It's just, like…"

"Like what, Sam?" she asked quite sharply. "Like it's fine for you to go out and shag any large number of boys but when I want to date someone you have a massive problem with it?"

I stared at her as I stuck my hands under the dryer. "Well, yeah," I said. "That's kind of it exactly."

She crossed her arms, looking pretty angry. "Sam, that's not fair!"

I looked at my hands while I rubbed them together under the jet. "I don't know why you're so into her, anyway. I'm prettier."

"Oh, my God!" Lara said, losing patience with me and putting her hands up on her head for a moment while she looked at the ceiling. "Oh, my God! Sam, you're not competing with her! You already got the position, you're my best friend!"

I looked up at her. "Exactly! So why do you need another one? I saw you, getting all giggly and chatty. You can have that with me!" I didn't actually really know what I was saying, but I figured I'd just let my mouth run off with it and see where it led me. "So what do you need her for?"

She gave me a look. "Do I really need to answer that? Really?"

I made a face. "Then just have _that_ with her and leave the rest for me. That's all I do with guys, anyway."

She shook her head, holding up her hands at me to signal she'd have enough. "I'm going to go out with her, Sam, because I really enjoy her company. You'd better get used to it." She turned around and just walked through the door.

Outside, I could hear Mariko asking her what took her so long. She made something up.

I glared at the door. I was _so_ not just going to lie down and 'get used to it', that was for sure.


	12. While You Were Working

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Ever thought of doing a Sam and Lara fic with the twister shower and/or bed sheet. I can totally see Sam surprising Lara with it and Lara just thinking "wow, Sam picked out some ugly tiles"
> 
> While You Were Working - Lara(POV)/Sam - SFW
> 
> By Asynca, in 21 minutes.

Sam was giving me _that look_ again as I walked in through the front door of our flat.

For ordinary people, I think that usually meant that if I wasn't up for it I should suddenly find somewhere really important to be and quickly go lock myself there. For Sam, however, it could have meant any number of things:

She'd spent what I would consider to be Too Much Money on ridiculous things that neither of us needed or had anywhere to actually put, and that guilt manifested as a desire to jump all over me and get proof I still loved her;

She'd posted a video of me she knew I wouldn't approve of and now felt awfully guilty, and that guilt manifested as a desire to jump all over me and get proof that I still loved her;

She'd booked us a holiday to somewhere full of drugs and nightclubs and all-night dance parties and that guilt manifested as a desire to jump all over me and get proof that I still loved her…

…actually, now I think about it, the only reason Sam was ever gagging for it was because she knew she'd done something I wouldn't like. And rather than just telling me and asking for my forgiveness – heaven forbid we actually _talk_ about anything like normal people – she'd rather just enact her penance _on_ me and tell me later when I'm too shagged to do anything about it.

I zipped my boots off. "What have you done?" I asked her flatly.

She fidgeted uncomfortably in the doorway of the kitchen. "You know," she said, squinting. "That's actually a really philosophical question…"

I put my boots neatly together in the corner, and then fixed Sam's haphazardly discarded shoes, too. While I was doing that, I noticed there was a layer of white dust on my lovely clean floorboards. That looked like… I bent down and touched my fingertip to it. Plaster, perhaps? "No, it's not," I said. "It's really very simple. Why is there white dust on the floor?"

Sam turned and leaned heavily against the doorway, looking pained. "Lara…" she said at length. "Can't I just want to do my girlfriend because she's _totally_ hot?"

I narrowed my eyes at her as I walked past, following the white trail. "Maybe in some alternate universe where there isn't mystery dust and boot prints everywhere."

She caught me before I went into the bathroom. When I looked quizzically at her, she made that agonised expression again. "Maybe you shouldn't go in there," she said. "Maybe we should have sex on the kitchen table. We haven't christened it yet, and that's practically heresy."

I retrieved my hand, gave her a look, and then continued my investigation.

When I pushed open the bathroom door expecting to see plain white, I got a surprise: in the space of a few hours while I'd been at work, the poor bathroom had suffered a complete makeover. Where there had been classic white tiles, there was now a series of loud primary-coloured spots, each as large as a dinner-plate. They were all lined up and led from the door all through the shower cubicle, which was now twice the size it had been this morning. It looked _terrible_ , like someone had made an awful decorating mistake when they were designing a children's nursery. Keeping with that theme, there was a playful dial with colours on it near the shower. I spun it, and the arrow landed on red. There was a symbol of a hand.

Sam had slunk in behind me, looking horribly guilty. She put the palm of her hand flat on a red spotted-tile and winced at me. "Have you ever played Twister?" she asked me innocently.


	13. Man to Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Anonymous asked: Prompt: Roth misinterprets relationship, gives Sam the Talk."
> 
> Man to Man - Sam (POV), Roth, Lara (GEN) - SFW
> 
> By Asynca, in 55 minutes.

Someone was knocking on our door.

I'd been expecting it to be the mail guy with a package or something, and since I had a pounding headache I figured I'd just pick it up at the post office later. About ten minutes into the knocking, though, it dawned on me that probably the mail guy wouldn't be _that_ persistent. Who would it be, though? Lara wouldn't be home this early and my other friends would just keep texting and IMing until I came out and got them – I didn't think I knew anyone who'd actually _knock_.

I sat up in bed and spent a good twenty seconds making a series of noises which articulated just how much I did _not_ want to get up. Then I lay back down and pulled the blankets over my head. Maybe I could just _will_ the person at the door to go away and stop knocking if I tried hard enough. Tragically, owing to the fact I don't actually have any psychic powers, the knocking continued.

Eventually, I admitted defeat and just got up.

As I was staggering down the hallway, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. I looked like _crap._ Like, worse than crap, I looked half-dead. Seriously, if I'd held my arms up and started moaning ' _braaaaiinnsss'_ , it would have looked totally in character. I had these huge dark circles under my eyes and my hair looked like something straight off Japanese TV. There was nothing about me that didn't scream _hangover._

So, of course, it was Roth. And he was wearing a shirt for like the first time ever. It even looked _ironed_.

"Lara's not here," I said, still wondering why he'd bother knocking for ten minutes. "She goes to class on Mondays until five and then she goes to work."

"I'm actually not here to see Lara," he said. "May I…?"

I was so confused by that, I just stared at him for like five seconds. Then I realized I was being really rude. "Yeah, of course, sorry," I said, standing aside and letting him in. "You want some tea or something?"

"Thanks," he said, and wandered slowly into the hallway, looking around us. "This is a nice place you two have got yourselves here," was his appraisal. "After that pokey little place Lara had Westside, I'll bet she doesn't know what to do with herself now there's room for actual furniture. Is it two bedroom?"

That seemed like a bit of a strange question, but I guessed Lara and I had bunked at boarding school so it wouldn't be _that_ weird to be sharing with her in a flat, especially in London. "Yeah," I said, ushering him into the kitchen and flicking on the electric jug. He sat kind of hesitantly at the kitchen table while it boiled. I took out a couple of cups. "How do you take it?"

"Black," he said. "No sugar."

Well, that was pretty easy. I dropped a bag into the mug and filled it up, taking it across to him. For myself, I poured myself a glass of water and dropped a Berocca into it. It was probably a myth that Vitamin B helped with hangovers, but whatever. Anything was worth a shot with this one. "So are you here about Lara's birthday?" It wasn't for a month or so, but Roth seemed like the kind of guy who'd want to be prepared. I was more of a shop-the-night-before person, myself.

He just frowned at me. He had some pretty impressive furrows in his brow, I noticed. It would look totally dramatic on black and white film. "No," he said. "Actually I thought you and I could have a little talk about Lara."

Okay… "About Lara?"

"Yes," he said. "You know she's like a daughter to me, Sam. I care about what happens to her and she doesn't always make great decisions about her welfare."

That, I laughed at. "Hah! You can say that again," I agreed, taking a sip of my Berocca. I made a face; I'd forgotten how disgusting that stuff was. "She's got _three_ jobs at the moment. Did you know that? She just picked up a shift at the café on the corner."

He smiled slightly. "Well, she's a hard worker. She's ambitious. Just like her father." His smile faded. "And I know you care about her, too. Which is why we need to talk."

I had _no_ idea what was going on.

He leaned back in the chair, taking a mouthful of his tea and watching me closely. It was kind of intimidating. "I was in town last night and I saw you leave the Builder's Arms with a young man. You weren't even trying to hide it, Sam. You were all over the boy."

What on… Okay, this was _really_ weird. What the hell was Roth doing at the Builder's Arms and why would he care about me getting it on with some random guy? I knew Roth was _traditional_ , but this was super, super traditional. Should I have married him first or something?

When I just sat there with my mouth open and no sound coming out, Roth continued. "Where was Lara when all of this was happening?"

"Uh, where she always is? At work?"

He sighed and shook his head at me. "I suppose you think that makes it all fine, then," he said. "Sam, this is _not_ fine, you're living together now. It's time you started being respectful of her."

"I thought I _was_ being 'respectful' by doing it while she's at work so at least she doesn't have to _hear_ it?" I said, feeling so totally uncomfortable about talking about this with him. It was right up there with That Time Your Parents Tried to Explain Sex on the awkward-o-metre. "And by the way, Lara doesn't mind. She knows what I'm like."

He ran a hand over his face. "Look," he said. "Look. This is really difficult for me. I wasn't brought up with it and I am trying to understand for Lara's sake," he said. "But you can't tell me that she thinks it's fine if you're bringing all manner of riff-raff into your bed when she's at work. I just can't believe that."

I just, like, stared at him. What do you even say to that? Your best friend's de facto dad telling you to stop sleeping around? Why did my extra-curricular activities matter to him, anyway? Did he think I was a bad influence on Lara or something? I scoffed internally: like that could ever possibly be the case. Lara was, like, _super_ picky to the point of just looking for reasons to never sleep with anyone. If I hadn't rubbed off on her in six years, I wasn't going to do it now just because we were living together.

"You want me to stop sleeping around?" I asked him, for confirmation.

"Yes, Sam," he said. "I don't care about what sort of arrangement you've got with Lara. It's not right."

This was _too_ weird. Too, too weird. I just really needed this conversation to be over ASAP. I didn't really intend to actually _stop_ having sex, but I guessed I was going to have to be more careful about it when Roth was in town. How did he see me, anyway? Was he _following_ me? "Okay," I said. "I mean, if it's that important to you I guess I can stop."

"It's not for me," he said, finishing his tea. "It's for Lara. Look, Sam, I know you've got a good heart. I know you do. I know you care about her as much as I do. But I also know you've not had a father around to teach you the right way to do things. That's not your fault, but I'll not have you taking that out on Lara, she's a good girl."

Ouch. That came out of nowhere. I could clearly hear that he was implying that I _wasn't_ a good girl, which just _hurt_. I'd changed a lot since I was a teenager, _he_ knew that. Compared to then, I was completely cleaned up. So I still drank on the weekends and slept with people, so what? It wasn't the 1950s anymore. People did that now. Well, people except his precious Lara.

And that stuff about my father? I blinked back tears. That stuff _hurt._ I wasn't going to cry in front of him. "Okay," I said, because I didn't know what else to do. He wasn't the sort of person you could contradict.

He went to show himself out, and I followed him automatically. As I opened the door for him, he actually looked me up and down. He didn't approve. "And shouldn't you be dressed at three o'clock in the afternoon? What are you still doing in your pajamas?"

Being a loser and a bad influence on Princess Lara, I thought, and blinked back more tears. How was this conversation _not_ over yet? "Nothing."

He put his hands on my shoulders and forced me to look at him. There was a warm, stoic smile on his face. "Just do the right thing by Lara, Sam. I know you've got it in you. I know you do."

After he'd gone I just kind of leaned against the door. What the hell had just happened? What was _that_? I hadn't had anyone tell me they were disappointed in me for years now, but it feel exactly the fucking same. Exactly the same as when I'd been standing in front of the headmistress and my parents and having a list of my transgressions recited while I stared at the laminate floor. 'She's your daughter, not mine', Dad had said to Mum afterwards, 'but clearly you can't be trusted to raise her'.

I went back to bed and lay there on top of the unmade blankets. Fuck this, I thought as I wiped my eyes. I haven't done anything wrong, have I?

My cell buzzed, and I toyed with the idea of just leaving it. I didn't feel like talking to anyone right now. Unfortunately, my curiosity got the better of me and I held it up for a second to see who it was.

" _Hey_ ," it was from Lara, " _Roth just called me. He was being really odd. Was he around there before?"_

I unlocked the phone and texted back, " _Yeah. To tell me to stop sleeping with people because I'm still a bad influence on you, apparently._ "

" _Sam_ ," came the reply. " _He basically said, 'It's okay, Lara, Sam and I had a little chat and I want you to know that you two have my blessing and I'm okay with it'. What on earth did you tell him?"_

That me and Lara had his… I sat bolt upright in bed.

_Shit._


	14. Merry Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You should write something really scary. Like a tr horror story."
> 
> Merry Christmas - Sam (POV), Lara - SFW
> 
> By Asynca, in 26 minutes.

Not that I'd ever had any latent desire to carve out a cooking show career for myself, but I _did_ set up my camera in the corner to document my progress on the seriously awesome eggnog I was going to make Lara.

Okay, so I'd never actually _made_ eggnog before, but I'd drunk it heaps so I figured I was an authority on it. The problem was, my really great idea of making it before she got home sort of relied on me suddenly developing previously unexpressed cooking skills. And, as I tried to separate the egg whites and just dropped huge chunks of shell into the milk, I realised that just the desire to cook hadn't actually spontaneously transformed me into Gordon Ramsey. Shit. Not even good editing could save _this_ disaster.

I stared down at the shell floating innocently on top of my probably-burnt milk. Then, I made a cursory attempt at fishing it out with a soupspoon before eventually giving up. "Whatever," I told the camera. " _Eggnog à la Sam_ has texture. It's a new recipe. Plus, egg shells are full of calcium and minerals, right? This eggnog is good for your teeth."

When it got to the point where I had to mix the brandy in, I just tipped the bottle over the saucepan and let it glug out while I munched on a slice of shortbread. I was usually disappointed by the low alcohol content in eggnog, so since it was up to me, it was going to be more flammable than an English plum pudding.

When I was done, the mixture didn't look frothy and smell like nutmeg. It looked like curdled Baileys and smelt like burnt milk.

I showed the camera and nearly sloshed scalding hot alcohol all over my wrist. "Hey, it's the thought that counts, right?" I declared. "Right!" Whoa, I'd had _too_ much of that brandy.

I did actually manage to get the _Eggnog à la Sam_ into two mugs without spilling it everywhere, burning myself or setting fire to the kitchen. That in itself was an enormous triumph, so when I staggered into the living room with two hot mugs I hadn't been expecting to wreck everything by spilling it all over the floor, but I did.

Lara had been sitting in the dark on the couch beside the Christmas tree, half-lit by the flickered multi-coloured lights. I had _no idea_ she was home.

"You should clean that up," she said in a really strange voice. She was being all weird again. I know she missed her family, but it had been so many years. Surely it was traditional by now to spend Christmas with me? Especially when I'd been trying so valiantly to make her celebratory Christmassy drinks to chill her out.

"Merry Christmas to you, too," I said dryly and rolled my eyes. I put the eggnog on the table beside her and then I went back into the kitchen to grab the dishcloth and my camera. I dropped the cloth directly onto the puddle and just kind of pushed it around with my foot and hoped that would do it.

Lara didn't say anything back to me.

"What's up with you, anyway?" I asked her as I reached towards the living room light switch. No one looked good in Night Mode. "It's _Christmas_. You know, a time for joy and hope and all that?"

It wasn't until I turned on the light that I could see the awful expression of shellshock on her face. She had a folded piece of paper in her hand. It looked like it had been scrunched into a ball in someone's fist and then rescued and re-folded.

Lara looked down at it, and then up at me. She held it up for a moment. "Blood test results," she said, and then struggled with the next part. "Sam, they're _positive."_

I didn't… _what_? The camera fell by my side as I gaped at her.

She just looked haunted. "Merry Christmas," she murmured.


	15. Agreement (set after The Dreaming)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agreement - Lara (POV), Min (est L/S, M/B) - SFW
> 
> By Asynca, in 47 minutes.
> 
> Set after The Dreaming, FULL of spoilers.

It took me several seconds to realise the sound I was half-hearing was my phone vibrating itself off my bedside table. I woke up enough to roll over and catch it before it walked itself off and smashed all over our brand new floorboards. It was already my fifth iPhone inside twelve months; Apple didn't need any more of my money.

I had assumed the racket was a series of emails, probably from Australia and probably about the business, but when I lay back and held the phone in front of my face it continued to vibrate in my hand. My eyes weren't clear yet so I just decided to take a gamble and answer it. "Hello?" God, my voice. I sounded half-dead.

"Hi." In that single word, I recognised a pronounced Australian twang. Min. "You busy?"

"Not unless you count sleeping," I whispered.

"I do, but since you're not sleeping now, I guess you're free," I could hear the smirk in her voice. "Is Sam there with you?" I looked over at her in her nest of blankets and pillows. She was snoring. Before I could answer, Min said, "Wait, I can hear her, never mind. I need to talk to you."

It was God knows what time in the morning, but that phrase still got the adrenaline pumping so much I could have taken down an army. "Okay, give me a second," I said, and slipped out of bed. The floorboards were _freezing_ and it was too dark for me to find when I'd put my slippers, even with the phone. I just took Sam's fluffy dressing gown from a pile of clothes on the floor and padded down the stairs into the living room.

Downstairs was much warmer, even though the embers in the fireplace were nearly dead. I went and sat on our immortal beanbag as close to the hearth as I could without burning my feet on the hot slate. "Okay," I said, not actually sure I was ready to hear whatever she had to say. "What's wrong?"

There was a moment of silence. "Well, I got the contract. Yesterday, actually."

"Oh?" I wasn't sure what that meant. I hoped there weren't some terms in it that were inadvertently insulting. I just had no idea what concept artists normally got paid or what to set the retainer at; Sam had done all of that research for me. "Is there a problem with it? Because I'm happy to change it, you know. I'm the one who wrote it. Just let me know what doesn't work and I'll get Sam's lawyer to make the amendments and send you a new one."

She made a noise. "That's not it," she said, and then sighed. "Lara…"

My heart was pounding.

"I lay awake in bed last night stressing," she said eventually. "I can't sleep until I ask you something."

Then ask it before the suspense kills me, I thought, staring down at the fluffy dressing gown over my knees. "Oh?"

"Yeah…" she said, and then spent a few moments thinking about how she was going to say whatever she was going to say while I worried about what it was going to be. "Lara, are you creating a whole fucking video game franchise just to give me work because of what happened to me?"

I exhaled with relief. Thank _God_ that's all it was. Still, I had to be a bit careful how I answered that. "Well," I said, "Sam and I were actually talking about what a great idea it is to turn it all into a video game. We lost a lot of footage after I—" shot her, I thought, but didn't say it, "after we were all kidnapped."

I could hear her release a breath she'd been holding, too. She laughed once. "I was going to tell you that I didn't want you to, if that's why," she said. "But I'm _so_ glad I don't have to say that, because it's shit trying to find work as an artist."

I thought back to all those _amazing_ pictures covering her wall. "But you're so good!"

She chuckled. "Oh, really…?" There was something about the way she said that.

I rolled my eyes, and I think it was audible in my voice. "Don't you start."

"Don't worry, I never start anything I can't finish," she said at the very bottom of her voice. I loved the way it sounded and because of that I was very glad when she went back to her normal tone. "Can you hear that? That's the sound of my pen signing this beautiful contract you sent me."

Hang on. "Wait, you were thinking of not signing it?"

She paused, and so did the pen and the paper-flicking I could hear in the background. "Lara, you know how I feel about charity."

I made an oh-shape with my mouth. "Oh, no, no," I said, realising what she meant. "Actually I wanted to help you guys way before what happened with Natla," I said, and then bit my lip while I thought about how to explain it without going too much into everything at five in the morning. "I lost a lot of friends last year," I told her. "I miss them. I can't believe I'm saying this because I'm a complete hermit, but I also really miss having people around. It was just really nice to meet you and Bree. You're both great. If I have all this money from Natla, why _wouldn't_ I want to do something productive with it, something that is for all of us?"

She thought about that before she eventually spoke. "Okay," she said simply. "By the way, Bree almost needed to be tranquilised for her own safety when she found out you're using her as a character."

I laughed at that. I could imagine. "So everything's okay with the contract?"

She made an affirmative noise. "Which is good, because I need some sleep. It's an oven in this fucking country right now."

"Okay, well, I'm going to not to freeze to death in _this_ country and go back to bed," I said, and then had a thought. "Min, if I'd told you that I actually was doing it all for you, would you still have signed it?"

There was a long, agonising pause. "Yes," she said. "I'm working with _you_."

My breath caught in my throat, and to my horror I felt butterflies in my stomach. I closed my eyes and scrunched up my face. We are _not_ doing this, I thought. No. She's too great a friend for us to wreck everything by doing this when we know it can't ever go anywhere. "I'm going back to bed," was all I said.

"Okay. Sleep well," she said neutrally, and then hung up. Was it too quickly? Or was it a normal hang up?

I stared at the landing screen of my phone for a few seconds until it locked and went dark. Standing, I took a deep breath and exhaled at length. It some ridiculous hour of the morning and I didn't really want to dwell on the conversation I'd had right now. Because on top of everything, it was _cold_ , and the thought of Sam keeping the bed warm for me was actually really appealing. I tip-toed back upstairs and crawled under the covers with her.

"Hey," she mumbled and then pulled my arm around her stomach, gasping when my hand touched her skin. "You're _cold_!"

"Not anymore." I smiled into her neck and went back to sleep.


	16. Little Blue Cross

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little Blue Cross - Lara (POV)/Sam - SFW in 21 minutes.

We both stood in the kitchen light and stared down at the little white stick. There wasn't any doubt about it at all, the symbol that was slowly revealing itself was a "+". Sam had been watching the panel of it through the LCD of her camera, but folded the screen closed as the cross solidified.

"Shit," she said, just double-checking the box to make sure that meant what she thought it did. "I've changed my mind. They can put it in cryo and I'll worry about this in like five or ten years, or, like, never."

I kissed her temple, a big smile spreading across my face. _Finally_. God, it was terrifying. "Congratulations," I told her anyway, and then leaned my crutch on the counter, taking the glass of red out of her hand and pouring it down the sink in one smooth movement.

She made a cursory attempt to stop me, but didn't put any real commitment into it. "I hate everything," she said. "And now I have to wait nine months before I can drink over it."

"You can't drink when you're breastfeeding, either," I reminded her, just checking _again_ to make sure the stick _definitely_ had a cross on it. We'd been waiting seven months for that little cross, and now that we had it, it was surreal. Maybe it was too good to be true. "Perhaps you should try another one," I suggested. "Just to make sure."

"That's number three right there," she said, putting the camera beside where I'd put her empty wine glass. "Oh, God…" She put a hand over her eyes. "I mean, I'm excited, but also, like, _why am I doing this_?"

"You _wanted_ children," I reminded her. "And, actually, the timing's not bad, is it? My knee's still on the mend." I'd taken a very long jump very badly in Mongolia and ended up absolutely wrecking half of my joints and breaking a couple of bones. Most of them just ached occasionally, but I was still on crutches for one of my legs.

"Great," Sam said, not sounding very comforted. "You'll be around so I can wake you in the middle of the night and make you drive to London to get me Macadamia Ice-cream and Polish pickles or whatever it is pregnant women want."

"Looking forward to it," I told her, and then looked back at the stick again. It was unbelievable what that little blue cross meant for both of us. For our lives and our future. I laughed at the sheer enormity of it. "Oh, my God."

Sam made a pained noise as she put the stick down and stepped into my arms. I kissed her nose. "Shit," she said, finally smiling. "Shit, Lara. We're going to be parents."


	17. PMS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PMS - Sam(POV)/Lara - SFW
> 
> becAUSE aSY FUCKING HATES EVERYTHING OKAY
> 
> sHE WROTE THIS IN 21 MINUTES

Okay, so, when _I'm_ premenstrual, I don't get out of bed until three in the afternoon. When I finally do, I slowly work my way through everything in the fridge that contains sugar and/or refined carbs. If I run out of those, I go looking for all Lara's favorite hiding places. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I might manage to _not_ spill food on my pajamas and spend four hours sobbing uncontrollably while scrubbing at them over the sink. Usually by nighttime I've graduated to crying about how my Mom will probably never love me as much as she loves herself and how everyone always thinks I'm stupid and naïve.

But when Lara's premenstrual? She gets twice the number of deadeye headshots on targets in half the time, starts and finishes some PhD-style essay on the history of Japan, submits it and has the professor _actually call her_ and personally invite her to guest lecture, and then cooks a full, healthy dinner. She even _works out_. I'm not even kidding, that all _actually happened_ this one time.

On top of all those things and probably heaps more, she generally has the _audacity_ to go and lie face-down on her bed and cry about how she put one typo in some essay, or how she missed one target or how one of her feet is, like, a millimeter bigger than the other.

Since I'd been actually crying about real, serious problems and Lara is fucking perfect in every way, I climb on top of her and beat her repeatedly with one of my pillows. "Would you _shut up?_ " I yell down at her. "You know how much it hurts to have people think you're this dumb bimbo when your girlfriend is basically crossed between a super hero and a MENSA candidate?"

She rolls over underneath me, her eyes so puffy it kind of looks like I've already punched her in them. "You don't understand, Sam," she says wretchedly, blowing her nose on an already pretty gross Kleenex. "My five mile times are actually getting _worse_. What if I'm slowly heading downhill and I don't even realize it but eventually I get us both killed?"

I pretend to smother her, because that's the only appropriate reaction to something so ridiculous. She's busy being so tragic she doesn't even make any sort of attempt to stop me, she just lies there completely still and lets me do it. I throw the pillow somewhere and lie down against her.

"I hate everything," I say into her shoulder, because there's no better way to articulate my family, myself or the fact I broke my favorite mug like ten minutes ago. Also, this month's casualties include my comfiest pair of panties. RIP, microfiber cotton-polyester blend that I can't find anywhere else on the internet. Of _course_ I had to wear them _today;_ further proof the universe _hates_ me. "Like, actually, I hate everything. Not even _chocolate_ can fix this."

"Which is probably for the best, since you ate all my chocolate," she says, kisses me, and then starts crying again.


	18. Fanfic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fanfic - Lara/Sam - SFW
> 
> By Asynca, in 19 minutes.
> 
> Set after The Dreaming, but probably understandable anyway.

As soon as Lara put Sam's steaming hot stir fry on the table next to her, she knew something was wrong. Sam _never_ ignored food. She also wasn't usually that intent on a laptop unless she was cutting video, since she used to phone to follow the news and the iPad for everything else. But whatever was on the laptop now had her complete attention.

Lara couldn't make her mind up if Sam looked entertained or uncomfortable. "Should I ask what you're looking at?" She peeked over the top of the screen just to check that it wasn't anything that… well, that she'd have to worry about Sam wanting to try with her later.

It was just text.

"Lara," Sam began, her eyes tracking along the screen as she was reading it. "Do you think you'd ever say 'bugger'?"

Lara's eyebrows went up. "I suppose I might have said it a few times in my life. Why?"

Sam's own eyebrows were way down over her eyes. "Never mind," she said, guaranteeing Lara would mind.

Lara dragged one of the other kitchen chairs over beside Sam and sat down, but before Lara could examine exactly what the document was, Sam shut the lid. Lara narrowed her eyes at Sam, and went to try and open it. Sam put a hand flat on top of the screen and winced. "So, have you been to Bree's Tumblr?"

"I didn't even know Bree had a Tumblr," Lara said. "I only sort of know what it even is. That's a blogging thing, right?"

Sam's eyes were still half-shut. "Kind of," she said. "Bree… writes."

"I think she mentioned that once or twice. I don't think she's serious about it, though."

Sam laughed, and it sounded rather dark. "Yeah. It's, uh, not serious, that's for sure." Curiosity got the better of Lara and she made another attempt on the laptop lid. Before Sam let her at it, she said, "Have you ever read fanfic before?"

Lara looked sideways at Sam for a moment as she opened the screen and leant in.

It was immediately obvious why Sam had been so very worried about Lara seeing it. "Oh, it's about us!" Lara said, a smile growing on her face as she kept reading. "Well, that's a bit of a strange idea, but I suppose she does actually know us in real—" Lara's smile faded, and she pulled the laptop closer, going over the last line of text in one of the paragraphs a few times. "Is that… No, she wouldn't, would she?" Lara already knew the answer to that question because it was _Bree_ they were talking about, but she didn't want to believe it. " _No_."

Sam was still squinting. "Yes."

" _No_ ," Lara repeated, holding firmly onto the side of the machine as she kept scrolling. Sam read along with her, and after a minute or two Lara sat back, taking a deep breath. "If this is going where I think it's going, I'm not sure I can do this." Lara wiped a hand over her face. "I can't believe _Bree_ would post this where _everyone_ can see it!"

"Well, it's going there," Sam said. "It's definitely going there."

Lara looked across at Sam. Sam shrugged.

Pushing their food aside to pull the laptop closer, they kept reading.


	19. Valentine's Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valentine's Day - Sam(POV)/Lara - SFW
> 
> By Asynca, in 46 minutes (to be fair, I had to do research for this one!)
> 
> COLLAB WITH TRIX: ART COMING SOON ON TUMBLR;)

February 14 is a really important day for me, and not because it's free drink central off people crying alone at bars. It's not even because I _finally_ had an actual real relationship that was going to survive through it this time.

It's because it was also Lara's birthday, and seriously? I was a _total_ genius.

I had this _whole_ thing planned for her. I spent weeks looking for this rare manuscript I think she mentioned in passing like a year ago. I finally found it, read it and discovered it was about _bushido_ -samurai-ordered society in the _Sengoku_ period in ancient Japan, and decided to go all out and dress up for her in all that stuff when I gave it to her. I had to scour London for a tailor that was prepared to even attempt to make a Samurai costume from that era for me, and _whoa_ did they overcharge me. Anyway, it was worth it in the end, because it looked _totally_ awesome and I _totally_ missed my calling as a hot lady samurai.

On February 14 I snuck back from a shooting and – because I could hear she was in the bedroom – I crept into the spare room quietly and dragged a chair up against the door.

Okay, I'd never really understood that whole thing with having servants that dress you. It seemed like a false economy of creating jobs for people. Who can't dress themselves, you know? Well. Trying to put on that samurai costume? I finally _got_ it. That thing weighed a tonne and there were so many knots and cords and folds of fabric that even though I had all the instructions it took me more than half an hour to get it all on.

After I was done, I inspected myself in the mirror. The result was pretty impressive, actually.

Hoo, yeah, I thought, turning around and inspecting myself from all sides. I am one _hot_ samurai. Watch out, ladies. I swung the katana around a bit.

Anyway, eventually I was sick of checking myself out and took the wrapped manuscript out of the closet. I'd get my camera from bag the alcove and then surprise Lara. I cleared the doorway and walked out into the—

—corridor, where Lara was leaning against the wall in nothing but an army-print bikini, socks and boots. She was trying to be sexy – and _fuck_ , she was – but she looked really uncomfortable, anyway. There was a sheen about her body that suggested she'd rubbed baby oil on it, and it made the light bounce off her so I could see _a lot_ more muscle definition than I usually could. She looked like a sports model, especially with her glossy ponytail over one shoulder. That bikini gave her _cleavage,_ and the oil made it look delicious.

Okay, I'm pretty sure I was salivating. I wanted to be _on_ that.

Lara wasn't salivating, though. She looked really surprised and stood up off the wall. "Sam," she said, "What on _earth_ are you wearing?"

"A replica fifteeth-century bushi—" I began to recite, but she interrupted me.

"Well, of course I know _what_ it is," she said. "But _why?_ "

There were a lot of whys. "Why are _you_ wearing those enormous combat boots with a _bikini?_ "

"It's February and the floor is cold," she said, looking down at the slate. "I also sort of thought they went together, what with the combat and the army print…" She trailed off and looked back at me. "Anyway, what on earth…?" She gestured at me.

"Oh, right," I said, and then held up the package. "My Noble Lady," I said in stupidly formal and old Japanese, "I present to you a gift for the anniversary of your birth."

She was already laughing as she walked forward and accepted the package from me. "Why the theatrics?" she asked me as she unwrapped it. I didn't answer, because I knew as soon as she saw what it was in the present, she'd get it.

She did. "Oh, my God!" she said as I watched her expression cycle from surprise to delight. "You _found_ it! You really found it!" She looked at me, and _that_ was the moment when I knew I'd be getting some tonight. "I could kiss you, but…" she looked down at her body. "I'm all oily."

I shrugged and my armor clinked. "How much mileage am I _really_ going to get out of this stuff? I had it made just for this."

Her smile fell. "It's not rented? You had it _made_?" She looked me up at down. "But it's perfect. Every detail." She looked back up at me. "And, Sam, you actually look pretty good in it."

I grinned. "I know," I said, brandishing the blunt katana again. "Badass, right?"

She _looked_ at me. "Right," she said in a funny voice, and then put the manuscript on the hall table.

"Happy birthday!" were pretty much the only words I managed to get out of my mouth before Lara had hers against it. When we parted for breath a minute or two later, she breathed next to my ear, "And Happy Valentine's Day, Sam."


	20. Four Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: I LOVE that you write AU's of your own works. It's a great way to deal with pushy plot bunnies (SMUT!) that you just can't really cram into the actual story without it being more trouble than it's worth. That said, whenever you DO write the 3rd installment after the dreaming, I think it would be awesomely awkward if Bree 'jokingly' suggested a 4way , or hit on Lara to make Min jealous or something evil like that (would Sam try to kill her?). Eh, you know the chars better than me.
> 
> It wouldn't be out of character for Bree to suggest it, but I don't think she'd suggest it seriously. Actually, Min would also potentially say something as a joke.
> 
> Something along the lines of,
> 
> Four Way - Lara/Sam, Min/Bree - (mostly) SFW
> 
> By Asynca, in 23 minutes.

"Wow," Sam said, staring at the telly as she cycled through the stations. "With forty-one channels you'd think there would actually be _something_ worth watching."

I already had the hotel information folder that had been beside the phone open. In the 'entertainment' section there were a series of movies listed. Some one them weren't half bad. "On the '5' channels there are some movies that—" I caught sight of some extra text, "—oh, never mind, you have to __pay__ for them. As if we weren't paying enough for the hotel already."

Bree was already trying to open the windows. "Those pay-per-view movies are usually, like, bad eighties porn anyway. What's the point of watching those when you're actually getting laid? It's dumb."

Min had been flipping through her phone, but sat up when Bree said the word 'porn'. She looked perhaps a little worried, but she didn't say anything about it. Instead she watched Bree messing about with the windows. "I don't think the windows are supposed to open, Bree."

Sam was already leaning on my shoulder and reading over it. "Whoa, look," she said, leaning forwards and pointing down the bottom of the page. "Bree's right. ' _ _Debbie Does Dallas__ '. It's a classic, worst camera angles in history." She made a noise. "Five dollars. What's that in US?"

"I'm not having porn turn up on my hotel bill because you're bored and want to watch terrible cinematography," I told Sam. "Someone would leak that and __The Sun__ would have a field day."

There was a really sharp, painful noise and then Bree wrenched the window open. She stood back to admire her handywork. "Well, it doesn't matter whether they were __supposed__ to open," she said. "Because they're open now." She looked back at us. "And don't pay for porn, we can just download it."

"We are __not__ watching porn." I just felt I should make that perfectly clear, even though I was pretty sure everyone was joking.

"There __is__ nothing else on TV," Sam said, grinning at me. I knew her well enough to know she was kidding, but I wasn't sure if the others did.

Min had been watching Bree wreck the hotel room, but her and Sam shared a glance at my expense anyway. "Lara's right, no watching porn," she said, but just as I was exhaling with relief she added, "Four lesbians in a hotel room? That basically writes itself. Sam, I hope your camera has a lot of battery left."

"I always bring a spare," Sam was trying not to laugh. "Because with Lara, you just never know what's going to happen. Or how long she's going to take."

I groaned. "I hate you both."

Bree was conspicuously absent from the conversation, and when I looked over towards her while Sam and Min made fun of me, I realised why. She'd been exploring the drawers and had stood back up, holding something small and black on the tip of her index finger. She looked worried. "Is this what a bug looks like?" she asked, holding it towards me.

It was a tiny microphone.


	21. Happy Birthday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday - Lara(/Sam) - SFW
> 
> By Asynca, in 51 minutes.

When I was little girl, no matter where we were in the world when it was my birthday, my parents would always make it special.

The night before, Dad would always take me out to dinner somewhere so Mum could make me one of her cakes for me. It didn't matter where we were – New York, Thailand, Kazakhstan – we'd always do it. It was our tradition.

Once, when I was turning eight, we were in the edge of Nepal and Dad took me up one of the nearby hills. I can remember it so clearly: there were storm clouds rolling in from the east and down in the valley where the village was, multi-coloured prayer flags fluttered in the rising wind. There was such a sharp contrast between the dark under the clouds and the light from the setting sun in the west. I couldn't appreciate how beautiful it was, though, because I was upset.

"It's going to rain on my birthday," I had told Dad, my bottom lip quivering.

"That means I can't work," he had reminded me. "Your mum and I will just be forced to spend the whole day with you. Won't that be awful?" He was smiling.

It started to rain before we made it back to base camp, and I remember Dad and I were running down the muddy foothills, laughing and getting absolutely caked in sopping mud.

That birthday, the cake Mum made me was in the shape of a prayer wheel. She'd used licorice for all the symbols and I didn't really appreciate it then, but looking back, she would have brought all of that with her from England. She'd been planning it for weeks. Thinking about what I'd like, imagining how I'd react. The anticipation on her face when she'd given it to me; I can remember it __so__ clearly.

I'd __loved__ it, of course I had. But not half as much as I loved getting sick on it the following day in the tent while the three of us played board games together. It was my favourite part of my birthdays: terrific cakes and board games with Mum and Dad.

On my tenth birthday, Mum had made me a cake in the shape of dig site – complete with multi-levels of sediment and then encouraged me to carefully eat each slice. When I bit into a piece I understood why: she'd cooked it like a Christmas pudding with silver shillings all buried in it.

"Bet I can find more of them than you, Lara," Dad had said as he'd starting stabbing at his slice. "I am a professional, after all."

"You'll break the artefacts if you do it like that," I'd primly told him. "You need to __brush__ across it like this." I demonstrated.

The pride in his eyes. __God.__ You just don't forget that. "You're going to be a great archeologist one day, Lara," he'd said, forgetting the cake. "I can't wait to sit in the audience of your first plenary. I'll wear a t-shirt that says, 'That's my daughter, that's my Lara', and I'll tell everyone that asks that you're amazing and I always knew you'd do it."

We'd laughed about that silly t-shirt. Mum had even threatened to have one made for my graduation.

It never happened, though.

Because as I watched their empty caskets being lowered into the ground five weeks before my fifteenth birthday, I realised I'd never get to see Dad wear it. He'd never be at my first plenary. He'd never tell everyone I was his daughter, he never tell anyone how proud he was of me. He __was__ my father, but now he'd never be anything except gone.

Roth tried. He did, he was a good man. For my fifteeth he went and had a cake made for me at some artsy cake shop in London. It was a tower cake in the shape of a mountain, and it was nice, I suppose. The icing was too thick and the cake was a bit dry, but that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was that no one who loved me with all their heart had spent weeks dreaming about it or hours making it. It was just a store cake. Someone made it, gave it to Roth, and then went home to __their__ family.

His eyes were swimming as he presented it to me, though. "Happy birthday, Lara," he'd said in that northern accent of his. The house had been so very big, and so very quiet. His voice echoed off the walls.

I didn't really eat any, I just sat beside it and cried. Mum would never dream up amazing birthday cakes for me ever again, and the three of us would never sit together getting sick on them and playing board games. It was over. They were gone. I was all that was left in this big house, alone.

Sam tried, too. God, I love her, she tried. On my nineteenth, Sam had gone one step further than going to an artsy cake shop: she'd __hired__ some fancy cake designer. The resulting cake was this __amazing__ replica of feudal Japan. All the figures in it were made of sugar and edible. I almost didn't want to; it looked like something that should have been studied itself. I hadn't eaten it because I didn't want to ruin it. Yoko, Sam's Dad's housekeeper, had thrown it out a few weeks later when it was starting to get moldy.

Things changed so much since then, and I didn't want to blame Yamatai, but… well, they'd changed. My twenty-second birthday was so different.

I didn't know where Sam was. It was eleven, and I didn't know where she was. It was eleven at night __on my twenty-second birthday__ and I didn't know where she was. I knew she probably felt bad about not arranging to have a cake made this year for me. It hurt, but I understood.

It was silly being all mopey on my birthday, though, so tried to make myself a cake, instead. I was and adult, now, right? I'd never been that much of a baker, but I'd Googled some cakes and decided an angel cake might be nice. Unfortunately I'd set the oven all wrong and when I'd taken the cake out of it, one side was flat and the other side was burnt. Well, I'd tried my best, and __a__ cake was better than no cake.

I sat down at the kitchen table with this ugly, butchered cake and stuck half-melted candles from last year into it. I lit them with Roth's old cigarette lighter. The light from the candles was almost brighter than the bulb in the kitchen.

It was so quiet.

There were no amazing cake designs this year. There was no stuffing myself full with my family and no board games. It was just me and this ugly cake, alone in the dim kitchen light of my London apartment.

I felt five years old again.

And I tried not to, __God,__ I tried not to, but wanted it all so much. I wanted Mum's crazy cakes. I wanted Dad and I being silly together as we ate them. God, I even wanted Roth's endearing and misguided attempts at being a Dad to me when Dad was gone. I wanted Sam here, holding me. Loving me while I try to eat this ugly, horrible cake that will never look anything like Mum's.

I wanted people singing and smiling and laughing and singing, "Happy Birthday, Dear Lara…" I wanted everyone I loved around me and hugging me and celebrating the fact that despite Yamatai, I was alive. I wanted everyone alive like I was. I wanted them here, now, eating this cake with me.

I wanted anyone, but there was no one else here.

Happy birthday to me.


	22. Summer Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Anonymous asked: Sam and Lara kissing in the rain. Perf 3 ooooo my shipper heart."
> 
> Summer Rain - Lara/Sam(POV) - SFW
> 
> By Asynca, in 32 minutes.

It was the first time we'd been out to see a movie together. You know, _been out_ been out. Together.

When we sat down in our seats and stuck our drinks in the holders, both our hands were free and there was only one armrest between us. I looked down at it; Lara had already claimed it as her own, and her hand was curled around the end of it, tapping a rhythm out in time to the trailer music. I'd held Lara's hand zillions of times but because it meant something else now, I was kind of worried she'd be way too embarrassed about it to let me do it here. I tried anyway, totally expecting her to shake her head a little and pull away.

Instead, she smiled sideways at me, lacing her fingers through mine.

I couldn't watch the darn movie. I just sat there with my stomach filled with crazy butterflies looking at our fingers.

Lara was _with_ me. I felt _like that_ about her, and she felt _like that_ about me. God, I could hardly believe it. I'd wanted her for so, so, so long.

I was too happy to pay much attention to the movie; and Lara commented on it as we left the cinema hand in hand, giving me a strange look.

"No, 'that angle was amazing', or 'learn to handycam' or 'I need to find out what grade of film they used for that shot'?" she asked, smiling across at me as we pushed the double-doors open and walked out onto the street.

I had been about to say that the cinematography had nothing on watching her, but I didn't end up actually doing it, because the street was _soaking_ wet and the rain was really bucketing down.

"Oh, that's right," Lara said, looking miserably up at the sky. "We're back in England."

Just then, there was a flash of light followed by a deep, resounding crack of thunder. It got the adrenaline going; that sound always did, now. That flash of light always reminded me of watching lightening strike the helicopter that Lara had been in on Yamatai.

I'd watched that helicopter fall sharply out of the sky, half on fire.

I'd watched Lara fall out of the sky, while I _screamed_ for her until my throat was raw and tried to run towards it, thinking that I'd never see her again.

When Lara looked at me, her face was just as haunted as mine.

Just a few seconds ago we'd been smiling at each other, laughing with each other. It had been the first day in so long when nothing mattered. Lara hadn't missed Roth. I hadn't jumped when people had come up behind me. It had been like before Yamatai, when we were both excited about the rest of our lives and we could just joke around and enjoy ourselves.

I _loved_ her, and I _had_ her. It had been totally the perfect day and I didn't want _this_ to ruin it.

"No," I said firmly, and she looked quizzically at me. "No. It's been the _perfect_ day. Like, I couldn't even daydream a better day than this, and _believe me_ , Lara, I daydreamed a lot about this." _  
_

She watched me, silent.

"Everything has totally sucked for so long, and this day was just awesome." I shook my head. "Lara, I don't want Yamatai to take one more single thing away from us."

To prove to both of us that we were finally safe, I walked out into the pouring rain in just my skirt and my t-shirt, and held my hands out. Nothing struck me, I didn't get washed away by a sudden wave of storm water. I just stood there and got slowly wetter and wetter as the rain fell on me.

"What are you _doing_ Sam?" Lara asked, but there was just a tiny hint of a smile in her voice.

"It's just water, right?" I asked, getting totally drenched to the bone by it. I could even feel my hair starting to stick to my face. "It's not going to _do_ anything. Yamatai is over."

She was shaking her head at me. I held my hand out to her and she looked at it for a moment and then stepped out from under the canopy into it. She probably hadn't been intending to laugh, but there's something about being unexpectedly cold and wet that makes shrieking, like, _totally_ compulsory.

She went one step further than me and jumped heavily into the gutters which were full of storm water, splashing us both. I tried to flick her with my wet hair and before long we were play-fighting outside the cinema in the pouring rain.

There were a stack of people people watching and probably thinking we were both totally nuts. "Don't look now…" I said to Lara. "I think we're the after-movie entertainment."

She didn't look at them, because she was looking at me. "I don't care," she said, and then pulled me close to her and kissed me as the rain fell all around us.


	23. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memory - Lara, Sam - SFW
> 
> By Asynca, in 21 minutes, BECAUSE THAT TRAILER FOR THE NEW TOMB RAIDER GAME AM I RIGHT!111111

The whole road was blocked off, and there were flashing lights, and people shouting, and media crews everywhere outside our building. I knew I wouldn't find Lara here anywhere in there, even though they all thought they had her barricaded inside our flat.

I was right. She was waiting for me in the park down the road, on the bench hidden in the middle of all the trees. She was even wearing that hoodie again, the one that totally made her look like some drug dealer.

"Hey," I said as I walked up to her. "How much for two grams?"

I couldn't see her eyes, but I'm sure they were rolling at me. "This isn't funny, Sam," she said quietly.

I sat down beside her. "It's pretty funny. At some point the police are going to knock down the door and realize you're not there. I rigged a camera up so we can watch the moment they discover all their efforts are for nothing. Wanna see?" I took out my phone.

She shook her head.

I shrugged, putting it away again. "It's all just some stupid overreaction, anyway. They'll let you off. I'm totally going to sue triage for tipping off the media, though. Privacy laws, my ass."

We watched more TV vans park near our street and hurriedly try and rig up their cameras. It was so completely ridiculous and over the top, I almost wanted to film it and add the Benny Hill theme. Although 'ridiculous and over the top' kind of described the media in general anyway, so I don't know why I was surprised.

Lara glanced up at me, and I could see her eyes in the shadow of her hood. She looked worried. "How many stitches did they give you?"

"Oh, right," I said, gingerly touching my neck. "Only five. And it's still numb at the moment so I can't feel any of them."

She looked forward again, slumping. "Will you have a scar?"

"Yeah. We'll match."

After a second, she looked up again. I was the only person she ever looked at anymore, and when she did, it always felt really good. Even now. Even with what had happened. "Sam, I'm so sorry," she began, putting a quivering hand over mine. "I was fast asleep, and I didn't know that you were–"

"–I know," I said, interrupting her. I could still feel it. I didn't want to upset her, but I could still feel it, suddenly finding myself pressed against the wall with a dagger to my throat. I'd just wanted to kiss her goodnight. "I know, Lara."

A silence stretched between us.

I took her hand in mine. "But will you at least see a therapist now?"

She nodded.


	24. Research

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: "MOAR SAM AND LARA TEASING EACH OTHER LIKE IN THAT OTHER REVENGE STORY YOU WROTE"
> 
> Research - Lara/Sam (POV) - SFW (Set after The Dreaming)
> 
> In 26 minutes. Wow. I am so out of practice...

So, I never really realized how much useless crap I had until the house half-burnt down and I didn't need like ninety-five per cent of the stuff that burned. I couldn't even figure out what it could have all been, and it wasn't until I actually needed something that I'd be like, 'Oh! That's right! We don't have an _umbrella_ , _'_ that I'd discover what that mush of melted goo and ashes had been.

Anyway, it'd been rebuilt for _ages_ now and I _still_ was missing stuff.

"Lara!" I hung around the bottom of the stairwell.

Lara was hunched over the table making this tense face at her iPad. She glanced up at me and then looked right back at the screen. "I really need to get this finished, Sam."

"Wow, I guess I'd better not ask you _one question_ then," I said, and then did, anyway. "Have you seen my nail scissors? I swear I had them with me in Australia, but I can't remember if we brought them back and if I used them since then and just left them somewhere…?"

She sighed audibly and looked up at me. "You're asking _me_ where the nail scissors are?"

She had a point. She was a nail-biter. "I just thought you might have seen them around."

She sat back in her chair and stretched. "The only thing I've seen in the last week has been these bloody runes," she said, gesturing aggressively at her tablet. "For some reason Professor Chamberlain has it in his head that _I'm_ the one to analyze them. Since when did anyone think _I_ would be the right person to look at anything Norse? I did one single unit on that civilization in uni, and that was it."

"You could have said no," I pointed out.

Her expression told me the exact opposite. "When an acting Dean asks you to do him a favour, 'no' is not an option."

I leaned on the table. "So what are you going to do?"

She shrugged. "Try and figure them out, I suppose."

"Well," I said, holding my hand out. "Can I see?"

She looked at me like I was totally crazy, and then passed me the tablet. I turned it around and had a look at some of the shapes. They meant nothing to me, of course. They still looked kind of cool, though, like the type of things sportsman tattooed on their biceps.

I held the tablet at her. "Doesn't that one look familiar, though?" I said, pointing to one that looked like an 'X'.

She _finally_ looked interested in the fact the alleged love of her life was standing there, trying to talk to her. "Really? You've seen it before?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I think so. I think I can _kind of_ figure out what the shape reminds me of…"

She sat forward. "What is it?" she asked. "Did you see it in one of your documentaries?"

I squinted at the tablet. "No…? It's more like…" I paused. "Oh, yeah, I know!"

She sounded _so_ excited, and I was seriously the most terrible person in the world. "You do?"

"Yeah, those lines there that cross over?" I zoomed in on them. "Like a joint, right? And these parts totally look like blades, don't they?" She figured out where I was going before I got there, and I saw her eyes narrow. "Don't you think it kind of looks like… my missing nail scissors?"

She _groaned_. " _Sam_ ," she complained, snatching back her iPad. "This is _serious_!"

"Are _you_ are _way_ too serious," I said, smug. "Let me know if you find them, okay?"

She didn't deign that with an answer, she just called out to me as I went to check in my handbag, "Just for that I'm going to make sure I mess up every take of that interview you're doing on me tomorrow!"

I practically cackled; the joke was _totally_ on her, because the interview was going to be filmed live. Guess who'd forget to remind her of that…?


	25. Ice Bucket Challenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ANONYMOUS ASKED: "Lara/Sam ALS Ice Bucket challenge?"
> 
> PERFECT
> 
> Ice Bucket Challenge - Lara/Sam (POV) - SFW
> 
> In 29 minutes.

"This is ridiculous, Sam. Why don't we just write them a check?"

Lara had her arms crossed and was watching me pretty sceptically as I set up the shot to make sure there was as much snow as possible in frame. The lighting was a bit washed out because everything was white way up here, but, man, it was going to look _pretty darn_ _hardcore_ with all this snow and ice everywhere. I couldn't wait.

"Because you're _Lara Croft_ ," I reminded her. "You know, Lara Croft, _Tomb Raider_? What kind of Lara Croft gets tagged in the Ice Bucket Challenge and just goes, 'Hey, even though I raid graves and kill zombies for a living, I'm far too posh to dump ice on myself. I'll just write you lads a check'?" My version of her English accent _may_ have been a total mess.

She rolled her eyes. "I do _not_ speak like that," she said. "And _this_ Lara Croft is a respected archaeologist and lecturer."

"Yeah, yeah," I said, and then filled a bucket full of snow and gave it to her. "You know that, I know that, and maybe like five archaeologists know that, but the other 99.99% of the population know her as the girl who shoots stuff and does crazy physical stunts like dump ice on her head on top of mountains. Hold this."

She took it, sighing heavily. "So what do I say?"

"Doesn't matter. Something about ALS being a terrible disease and then dump it all over you. Oh, and tag some people." I stood behind the camera and did final checks. "Okay, we're good, let's roll."

"Okay…" she said, and then stared at the camera. She didn't look very impressed. "Hello, everyone. My _incredibly wonderful_ _partner_ ," she said, obviously meaning the total opposite, "thought it would be a brilliant idea to tag me in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. I would just like to say that while I am happy that the stunt is raising loads of money for a good cause, what I'm actually doing this for is to help fund research into a debilitating disease. As for tagging, if you're watching this, you're officially tagged by me, Lara Croft, and I—" She caught sight of something in the bucket. "Oh, god, what's _that?"_

I figured I'd just cut this bit out later, so I didn't stop rolling. "What? Is there something gross in there?" I ducked over to have a quick look at what she was talking about.

"Yeah, there's something under this snow…" she began as I leaned over the bucket to check it out… and then in like half a second flat she'd whipped the damn bucket up. _My_ reflexes weren't fast enough to stop her, you know, since I wasn't _superhuman_ like she was, and she _totally_ took advantage of that.

I tried to push her away and I'm pretty sure I was squealing at a mic-distorting pitch, but she had a seriously tight hold of me. Before I knew what the hell was going on, I was on my back in the freezing cold snow and _both_ of us were covered with the contents of her bucket. Also, somehow she was on top of me. Not that I was complaining about that, but with Lara, landing like that was definitely intentional.

"Tag," she said smugly. I swear to god.

"I _hate_ you," I told her, rubbing a handful of snow into her hair as I kissed her.

The only good thing about being _soaked_ was that I got it all in shot. Even though I was wet, cold and probably going to catch pneumonia and die in like three days, I'd die with a _serious_ number of likes and shares with _this_ ice bucket challenge video.

 


	26. Halloween 1 (3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Halloween #1 - Lara (POV) / Sam - SFW
> 
> Completed in 29 minutes.
> 
> The first of three drabbles (got to break it down into bite sizes these days) in response to a prompt someone gave me: "Prompt! Lara, Sam, Min and Bree at a Halloween Party! But oops, Lara and Min wear the same costume… What happens next is up to your creative mind I guess (If you ever decide/get time to write this Halloween prompt)"
> 
> Set after The Dreaming.

Because I'm so used to Sam's accent, so I forget all the time that Sam was brought up in LA. I suppose when I've spent so much time and energy studying her Japanese ancestry, it's only natural to forget about the other parts of her, isn't it? Parts of her that make her whinge that serving sizes are too small in Europe, make her completely addicted to reality TV and the parts of her make her worship commercialised versions of public holidays like Valentine's Day, Easter and Halloween.

God, and the amount of money she spends on all these holidays, it's completely ridiculous. Who on earth needs an eight-foot plastic Skeleton that has a laser sensor so it lights up and cackles whenever you walk past it?

Sam, apparently. Oh, god… I leant forward to check its price tag and nearly had a heart attack. "Sixty quid?" I was so appalled I said it loud enough for the girl behind the counter to hear. "Sam, are you mental?"

Demonstrating her mentalness, Sam stepped playfully in front of the sensor again and the skeleton's eyes lit up. So did Sam's. "Oh, come on, Lara!" she said, triggering the sensor again and laughing along with it. "It's Halloween, and it would be so funny if we put this right next to the door. When people arrive it'll scare the hell out of them!"

"Great," I said, taking her hand and trying to drag her out of the novelty shop. "It'll be like a snap poll of which of our guests has PTSD."

Sam winced. "Okay, so, maybe we can leave the lights on outside or something…?" She pulled back on my arm. "Lara, if I really want to give people an authentic US-of-A Halloween party I've got to have tacky plastic skeletons and fake spiders. It's the rules."

Since when did Sam have any sort of regard for rules? "You're going to fill our house with overpriced plastic rubbish because that's what an American Halloween party is about?"

She grinned. "You bet. That, and candy. Lots of candy. Oh! And we need to buy some pumpkins, too."

She looked so excited about this bloody party, I swear, and that smile… it reminded me of the wistful one she'd given me as she lay dying on the grate of Natla's ship. Delirious from blood loss, she'd told me about another holiday: Christmas. You spend it with your family, she'd said, and then told me about all her dreams for all our Christmases together. Christmases with our to-be family. God. I pushed that memory aside before I could react to it. I wished I had amnesia like she did. I wished I didn't remember any of that stuff.

God.

Well, when I really thought on it, I supposed a tacky skeleton that gave people a fright wasn't the worst thing she could do to our house, was it? And doing this sort of rubbish made her so happy.

Sam could see my resolve waning. "Yes!" she said, bouncing on her tip-toes to give me a peck on the lips before rushing off to purchase the ridiculous skeleton. "Trust me, you're going to love how I'm going to decorate our place for the party!"

I doubted that, but I loved the person who was decorating it.


	27. Company (set after The Dreaming)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Company - Lara (POV), Bree - SFW
> 
> Set after The Dreaming, done in 34 minutes.

It was far too hot in there. Hot, crowded and _loud._ If I'd thought Brits were a mad lot when they were drunk, it was because I'd not had a drink with a sizeable bunch of Aussies. And this lot were supposed to be professional business people, as well. God, I'd been out here for five minutes and my ears were _still_ ringing.

I shook my head and went to sit out in the garden, on their friend's ancient, rusty trampoline. I had a feeling it didn't get much use; pity, really. I'd always wanted a trampoline when I was a little girl.

I climbed up onto it and lay on my back, staring upwards at the eucalypt branches and, above them, the stars. Sam's voice was alternating in and out of earshot, and her intonation made it sound like she was telling a story. I could almost imagine her acting it all out, and that made me smile. People were cheering her and laughing with her, and I could hear her laughing, too. Thinking about that and listening to her nearly made me fall asleep because I was _so_ tired and the trampoline was _so_ comfortable. When a leaf fell on me I found myself startling awake and immediately reaching for where my holsters usually were. When I couldn't find them, I suddenly worried about spirits, and when I realised _they_ were gone, I lay back and stared at the stars again and took some deep breaths.

Sam, I thought, hearing her voice again over the raucous inside. I tried to relax. She was okay, and so was I.

Footsteps on the verandah startled me _again._ "Lara?" That was Bree's voice. I groaned internally. I just could _not_ deal with that girl right now, even if she meant well. "Lara, are you there?"

Well, I couldn't very well ignore her, could I? "Over here."

"Oh, right," she said, and I heard those energetic steps of hers walk across the verandah, jog down the stairs and crunch grass under her feet as she came over to me. "I brought you some cake. If I leave it in there, people will eat it all in like five seconds, and I made it for you and Sam, so…" She held out the plate at me.

I forced a smile and took the plate. Cake was the _last_ thing the world that I felt like, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings. "Thanks, Bree." I paused. I wanted to tell her to leave me alone, but, _again_ , I didn't want to hurt her feelings. "Sorry, I won't be much company tonight."

Bree laughed good-naturedly and, to my slight annoyance, climbed up and sat on the edge of the trampoline. "That's okay," she said. "Min's never good company, I'm used to it!"

Privately, I disagreed. Min's company I probably could have dealt with. She wasn't one of those people who always insisted on holding a conversation for the entire duration of the visit. Bree was. God, I wished this girl would just go away. I was tired and grumpy. "I'm sorry, Bree." I hoped she'd get the message.

She must have done, because she hopped down again. "It's nice to sleep out here sometimes," she said as she smoothed down her dress. "I mean, it's kind of a bit cold at this time of year, but the breeze is nice and it's nice to hear the wind in the trees."

I laughed once. "Somehow I don't think I'll be doing much sleeping out here," I told her. Or in general. Not after last summer.

She was quiet for a little while as she watched me. I never really got the sense Bree thought about things too deeply, but perhaps I may have been mistaken. There was a sense of genuine understanding in her eyes when she looked at me.

"Min gets nightmares, too," she told me quietly.

I looked across at her, a bit stunned. Was she much more perceptive that I'd given her credit for, or was I just being very bloody obvious about everything?

I didn't really have enough time to wonder about the answer, because she brightened and said cheerily, "Well, I hope you manage to get some sleep in Australia for once!" as she went back inside.


	28. Deep End (trigger warning)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deep End - Sam, Lara POLICE AU - SFW
> 
> Because it's about time I wrote an AU. It's also about time I wrote third person.
> 
> Completed in 210 minutes (when I should have been working on commissions T_T)

When the call patched through, Constable Croft had been in the middle of unbuckling and unfastening all the various pieces of her uniform, and had _just_ reached her heavy, uncomfortable belt. She'd been fantasising about the point where she got to take the blasted thing off _all_ evening, and the time had _finally_ come when she heard the static from a speaker.

Her shoulder radio – now actually on her chair and not her shoulder – hissed and then a familiar voice with a thick, familiar accent said, "Four-oh-one, we've got reports of an incident on the M3 South Western Causeway, do you copy?"

He had to be _kidding_. Croft _groaned,_ arms flopping by her side as she abandoned her belt buckle. _Of course_ they had an incident there _right now_. It was miles out and the middle of the bloody night. She leant over to the radio and pressed transmit. "No, I don't bloody copy, Roth," she said into radio. "I've just finished a double-shift. Tell Traffic to get it."

He didn't seem fazed. "It's a jumper on the bridge, there," he said, and the word immediately made Lara's stomach flutter. "So, should I kindly ask whoever it is to schedule his suicide attempt for a more convenient time?"

 _How about a time when I've had sleep and I'm not all by myself_? Croft thought, frozen. "Can you ask one of the seniors from North East?"

"Come on, Lara," Roth said. "The poor man'll be long gone and buried by the time _they_ arrive at the scene."

Croft stared at the radio, trying to think of another reason she couldn't go.

Roth had been working with her long enough to know what that silence meant. "You'll be fine," he assured her. "He's probably just looking for an excuse to climb back over, anyway. Trust me, if he'd wanted to do it he'd have done it by now."

Croft drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, looking down at the chair beside her locker and all the pieces of her uniform laid out on it. Tentatively, she pressed the button again, "Well, I think you should have called North East."

He _laughed_ , the bastard. "I put you in this role for a reason, Lara," he told her. "But it certainly wasn't because of your self-confidence. You'll be fine."

Croft didn't say anything to that. She just began, piece-by-piece strap, to reluctantly fasten and layer all the parts of her uniform back onto herself. Most of it was useless, really; she was in Community Support and not in the business of arresting or shooting people. Still, policy dictated she dress exactly the same as warranted officers.

…Even when she was just going to be leaning over a bridge and telling some poor man that his wife would forgive him, or that he'd get another job soon and his children were still proud of him, or whatever comforting phrase she'd take straight out of the training manual to try and stop him from jumping. _God_.

She sighed at the mirror again, and then headed out to her car. The M3 Causeway was a fair way out, but at least at this time of night there was no traffic.

It actually took several laps of the bridge for Croft to figure out where the reported jumper actually was; and it was only because there was a faint shadow against the lights of a shopping centre in the background that she even found the person. Hoping she wouldn't _royally_ bollocks this up, she pulled the car over, switched the lights on, and then walked over towards the shadow.

She'd been rehearsing the lines from training, when she spotted the hand curled around the railing in the headlights.

It was small, and the fingernails were painted bright red.

She stopped for a second, staring at it. It wasn't a jilted husband or a fired businessman at all. When she got to the railing and leant over it, she saw it was actually a young Asian woman – early twenties, maybe? – with a really edgy haircut, the shortest possible legal dress, and tear-smeared make-up all down her face. She was crouched on the other side of the railing and was really tiny, _really_ pretty, and _really_ crying. Deep, soul-wracking, hopeless sobs.

And yet, she hadn't jumped.

Croft panicked for a moment. She had _no_ idea what to say to this woman.

The movement startled the woman a little, and as she turned her head towards Croft, her stilettos slipped a bit on the steel pylon. Reflexively, Croft grabbed her hand on the railing.

The woman looked at it, and then at Croft, and then closed her eyes. "What are you doing here?" she asked, as if the police showing up at her public suicide attempt was annoying and unusual. She had an American accent, and she smelt like a mixture of expensive wine and French perfume.

"I was about to ask you the same thing," Croft said, and tried to force a warm smile. "What's your name?" She hoped she didn't sound as nervous as she felt.

She woman sighed. "Does that even matter?" she asked flatly. "I mean, it's three am, I bet you'd prefer I'd just have done it by now so the paramedics would be scraping me off the highway down there and you could sign something off and go home to bed." Croft felt a twinge of guilt. She _had_ thought something along those lines a moment ago… The woman looked down at the road below. "Maybe I _should_ just do it…"

Taking a sharp breath, Croft tightened her grip on the woman's hand. "Please, let me help you back over instead. Believe me, I'd much rather that than anything else."

The woman didn't make any sort of move to let go and fall, though. She just kept staring downwards; a tear rolled off her cheek and they both watched it fall and disappear onto the motorway. Croft swallowed. She didn't want this poor girl to follow. She should say something else, shouldn't she?

"I'm Constable Croft," was what ended up coming out of her mouth. "Lara, really. And I'd shake your hand, but, well…" She smiled wryly down at her hands: they were gripping the woman's wrists. No sooner had she done that, though, she felt _ridiculous_ for trying to make light of a very serious situation.

The woman looked back up at her, surprised. "I can't believe you just tried to joke with me," she said, but seemed to appreciate it, anyway. "Do they teach you that in Cop School? Joke with people who are about to kill themselves, it'll lighten the mood?"

Croft _winced_. She'd already buggered this up already, hadn't she? "No…" Croft said, _sighing_ , "I just have naturally bad judgement about things like this."

The woman was smiling properly now. "Great, I'm being talked down by a dork in a uniform. Are you even strong enough to stop me if I do actually decide to jump?"

That, Croft had something to comment on. "Actually, I'm pretty strong," she paused, realising how that sounded, "by the way, that is _not_ an invitation to test my strength."

The woman watched her for a second, relaxing a little. "Sam," she said. "You asked my name before? It's Sam. Sam Nishimura." Croft couldn't help but recognise it, and Sam noticed. Any trace of that smile disappeared and she said, "Yeah, I know what you're thinking. _The_ Samantha Nishimura. Drunken, slutty, party-girl daughter to the Benevolent Supreme Media Moghul Toru Nishimura."

That _hadn't_ been exactly what Croft had been thinking. She'd been thinking that Sam's name was Japanese, and that once upon a time, she'd been _fascinated_ with Japanese history. A _long_ time ago.

In remembering that, though, Croft had been silent.

Sam interpreted the silence in completely the wrong way, and her face just completely closed up. " _Fuck_ ," she said, scrunching her face up. "Fuck. I'm _such_ an idiot. Fuck, why did I _tell_ you that?"

Croft shook her head. "No, no, you've misunderstood, I was just thinking that–"

"—that you'll make a fortune when The Sun interviews you about this later?" Sam interrupted her. It sounded like something she might have said before _many_ times. "Yeah, I know how it goes. Well, why don't you give them a _real_ story, then? Tell them I'm pregnant to Prince Harry or something and my father went nuts about it so I killed myself—"

"—Sam, I—"

"—I'll be so mangled by the cars all driving over me that no one will even know you're lying and—"

"—Sam, _stop_ , that's not what I—"

"—they'll think _the_ Sam Nishimura was just some messed-up, pregnant, alcoholic—"

This time, Croft interrupted _her_ , loudly enough to speak over her."Actually, I was thinking how awful it must be to have to introduce myself like that," she said. "Like you just did. To someone who hasn't met me before."

That silenced Sam. She didn't speak for a few seconds, she just looked back down at the road far below.

"Today, I bought champagne," she murmured. It was hard for Croft to hear her over the motorway below. "I just went into a liquor store and picked up a bottle and gave it to the guy on the register, and I was like, 'Hey, just this, thanks!', and it wasn't like he actually _said_ anything, but the way he looked at me…" She shook her head tightly. "I smashed it on the floor right there in front of him, just like he probably expected me to. I smashed a bottle in a store in front of a zillion people because someone looked at me funny. I'm a head case. Just ask The Sun."

Everyone knew The Sun was rubbish. "No one believes that tripe, Sam."

Sam laughed once. "And yet, guys on registers in stores _still_ look at me like I could be about to get wasted and dance topless on the counter. And the worst thing is, I probably would," she said, as if that was the worst thing someone could do.

"And so what?" Croft asked. "There's nothing wrong with that. I saw a lot worse when I was bartending, and all the girls who did it always ended up being really lovely."

Sam looked surprised by that, surprised enough to forget briefly about the champagne bottle. " _You_ were a bartender? Like, you actually took _that_ job and not, like, sewing doilies for High Tea parties or something?"

Croft wasn't sure how to answer that. "Uh, yes?" She paused. "What do you mean 'sewing doilies'?"

Sam laughed a bit. "You know, you seem totally uptight and proper, not the kind of person who becomes a bartender and parties with drunk people for a living."

"Well, I didn't really party for a living," Croft corrected her. "I poured drinks for the people partying and tried to make sure the place didn't get too smashed up."

Sam's face fell. "Oh, right. Of course you did," she said. When Croft prompted her, she shook her head. Eventually, she said, "For a second I thought…" She pressed her lips together. "Never mind."

Croft squeezed her hand. "You thought…?"

Sam shook her head again as if to refuse to answer, but then she answered, anyway. "Well, look at you, you know? I'm an idiot. Of _course_ you don't party."

Croft didn't follow. "I'm sorry?"

Sam rolled her eyes in exasperation at having to spell it out. "You don't get drunk and do stupid crap, do you? You're out here at three am in your freshly pressed uniform trying to stop the people who _do_ get drunk and do stupid crap from killing themselves, and then you go home and hang it up in your closet. I bet your parents are so proud. I bet _your_ father doesn't fucking _sell you out_ to the press and ship you off to foreign countries because of how bad you are, does he?"

Croft opened her mouth, and then closed it. "He's dead."

Sam looked taken aback. "Oh." After that, it looked like she didn't know what to say. A silence stretched between them.

Croft felt that creeping panic of not being sure what to do return; the only thing she was sure of was that she _really_ wanted this poor girl over the railing and not about to jump onto a motorway. "Come on, let me help you climb over," she suggested. "I'm not going to tell The Sun. I'll even put in my report that you didn't say who you were. I'm happy to do that for you, if you'll just climb over."

Sam watched her carefully for a few moments. Her eyes were swimming with tears again, and when she spoke, she sounded _exhausted._ "I wish I could believe that."

"That I won't tell the Sun?"

Sam shrugged. Another tear rolled down her cheek as she closed her eyes again for a second. "'I'm happy to do that for you'," she repeated, and then shook her head. She was still looking down at the road. It made Croft nervous. "Just go arrest drug dealers or something. Leave me here to figure out how to not to screw up this _one_ thing."

Croft tried to keep her voice calm, like they'd told her in training. "Sam, I know you must be feeling quite—"

"Yeah, yeah, I bet it says that in the manual or whatever," she said dismissively. "I bet it's going to be really annoying to fill in all the paperwork after I jump, right? Or maybe the paramedics do that when I'm DOA?"

"Sam, that's not it at all. It actually _does_ matter to me if you're—"

" _Stop it_!" she hissed, Croft's calm voice bothering her for some reason. "Stop it, okay? Stop this 'I'll help you' crap, I know you're just doing your job." She went to wrench her hand out from under Croft's, but, just as Croft had said, she was _strong_. "Just let go already!"

That only made Croft grip her wrists more tightly. "No, I'm not going to do that!"

Sam began to use her weight to try and pull away. "Just go away!" she said managing to get one hand free and leaning precariously over the motorway, "Just go home to your warm bed and your quiet life and your steady job and your fucking High Tea and doilies and stop _pretending_ that it matters to you whether or not some stupid drunken daughter of Nishi-what's-his-name jumps off a bridge at three am onto—"

Croft couldn't remember making a decision to do it; but she did, anyway. With the free hand, she dug in one of her _many_ utility pockets in the high visibility vest, and before she'd had a chance to think anything over, she'd slapped a handcuff around Sam's wrist. Then, almost in slow motion, they both watched her fasten the other end around her own wrist.

 _That_ wasn't in the manual.

The protests died on Sam's lips as they both stared down at the handcuffs. Then, making sure Sam saw her do it, Croft held up the key and lobbed it across the asphalt towards the flashing patrol car.

They both watched it dive under the headlights, and listening to it clink along the road.

Croft swallowed, turning back to Sam. "There," she said definitively, trying to hide her shaking voice. "Please don't jump."

Sam just gaped at her, stunned. After a few seconds, she said quietly, "But you could have just put the other end on the railing…"

"Yes, I could have."

"…But you didn't."

Croft shook her head. "Now do you believe me?"

Sam closed her jaw and turned her body back towards the railing. Standing properly face-to-face, Croft realised that if Sam hadn't had those heels on, they'd both be the same height. They were probably the same age, too, or close to it. But they'd obviously lead lives that were so very, very different.

Sam's eyes dipped to the railing. There was resignation in her voice. "I'm a bit drunk," she confessed, patting the steel. "Can you help me?"

Croft did, gripping those slender arms and that tiny waist and helping the shaking girl back onto the road side of the barrier. She wavered on those party heels and Croft would have liked to let her sit in the patrol car with a blanket around her shoulders, but due to the fact they were handcuffed together, they _both_ had to crawl around on the road looking for the blasted key.

"Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time," Croft confessed, blinded by the headlights and feeling along the cool, wet asphalt.

She could hear Sam laughing. "Hey, I'm here, aren't I?"

When they'd found the key and unlocked the cuffs, Sam circled her wrist, wincing. There was a red line on it. Croft felt a bit guilty about that. "Sorry, I'm actually not meant to latch them that tightly."

"Yeah, you're a bad cop," Sam said dryly, but she was still laughing.

From there, Croft would have normally taken the person back to the station to make sure they were linked in with psych services and support, or maybe even taken them to hospital… but she couldn't do any of that unless she was going to ID Sam. And since she wasn't going to do that, she should really just dismiss her. She didn't, though. Instead, she was just standing there, oh-so-professionally, wondering what on earth was supposed to happen now.

When Sam stopped laughing, Croft realised she'd just been standing there, staring at the other girl in awkward silence.

Sam seemed to find it charming rather than _horribly_ amateur, though. "Should I, like, let you go save some more lives or something?"

Croft somehow pulled herself together. "I was actually off duty when I took this call."

That struck home for Sam. "Oh…" she said as she let that sink in. After a moment, she added, "So, you're just going home now?" When Croft confirmed that with a nod, Sam made a face. "Okay, is it, like, really messed up if I offer to buy you dinner? You know, since you're definitely, definitely not going to put any of this in a report?"

Croft scrunched her eyes shut. "Oh, god," she said, exhaling. She _was_ hungry, and this woman didn't seem like she'd be the worst type of company, and it wasn't like she hadn't broken _every other rule_ … "You're going to get me fired."

Sam laughed at that, but as her laugh tapered off and they climbed into the patrol car, she had a thoughtful look about her. "This isn't part of your job, is it?"

Croft made a very firm noise. "Handcuffing suicidal women and then accepting their grateful dinner invitations? I should think not."

Sam smiled ear-to-ear at her as she wiped her cheeks on a tissue. "Just checking," she told Croft as they pulled out from the edge of the bridge and went to look for the smallest, dodgiest, darkest little restaurant where no one spoken English and no one would have read The Sun.

Just as she'd promised, the report Croft handed to Roth the following day stated that she'd dispatched but had arrived at the bridge to find no one there. He listened to her recount that, read the report twice and rubber stamped it. "I took the odometer reading out of the car myself," he said before he handed it back to her.

She made a face, sucking air through her teeth. "Sorry, I keep forgetting about that with the new forms. I'll get it right next time."

He nodded, and then he watched her for a second. "Oh, and I like your new perfume."

 _Perfume?_ "I don't…?"

"It makes the patrol car smell _very_ nice."

In the second it took Croft to _panic_ , he was already laughing. "Go home, get some sleep," he told her, putting a warm hand on her shoulder and not probing further. As Croft left, she spotted him seated at his desk with a big, proud smile on his face. She left with one, too.


	29. Prison prompt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Could you do a prompt based on that prison-psychiatric unit (or whatever it is?) picture of Sam and LAra?"
> 
> Done in 35 minutes (man, I'm rusty).

From the relic pressed against my ear, I had a feeling this facility hadn't been updated since the 1970s. The receiver looked like a modified retro telephone. I gave it a bit of an odd look before trying to speak into it. "H-Hello?"

She was laughing at me from the other side of the glass. "It's like you've never used a phone before," her voice crackled out of the receiver. "Here. You hold it like this against your head." She demonstrated. "And you speak into _this_ end…"

"Oh, shut up," I told her, but I was smiling. "It's just…" I surveyed the visitor centre around me. "It just looks like a movie, that's all."

"Or maybe a TV series?" Sam said, brushing down her orange jumpsuit and grinning at me.

I rolled my eyes at her. "You watch too much rubbish," I told her mock-sternly. "At least maybe in there you can develop some new hobbies other than watching telly, like—oh, I don't know—reading, or gardening, or staying in one place without trying to follow me and getting into trouble, or—"

"—Or making sharp weapons out of otherwise innocuous household items…" Sam finished my sentence with a grin, and then relaxed back in her chair. "Which might actually come in handy for us, you know. Besides," she said, "you're actually wrong. There's almost _nothing_ to do in here _except_ watch TV, and it's the same four channels over, and over… I mean, if I wasn't insane already, right…?"

She was smiling, but that's why I was here, wasn't it? Why I was sitting on the wrong side of this bloody shatter-proof glass with a plastic 1970s receiver against my ear instead of sitting beside Sam on our couch. I looked around us; there were two guards there. They were pretending not to listen, but they were. Of course they were, and they thought we were both crazy. Just like everyone did.

Her smile had faltered by the time I looked back at the window. "I'll find a cure, Sam," I told her, whispering like it would make any sort of difference. "I'll find the truth. I'll get you out of here, I don't care what it takes."

I watched her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "Okay," she said, speaking just as quietly as I was. "And, like, it's not that I don't totally enjoy your company, Lara, but whatever you do, please don't end up in here with me, okay?" She put her hand up against the thick glass.

I put mine against it; the glass was warm from her touch, and it was as close as I was going to get to touching her for a _long_ time if I didn't find a cure. If I couldn't prove what had happened wasn't Sam's fault.

I set my jaw. "I promise that next time you see me, I'll be taking you home," I told her firmly, right before the line cut out and the smug guards came to escort me out.


	30. Rise AU teaser (spoilers for Rise)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU from the beginning of this video, if Sam was there instead of Jonah.
> 
> Set after The Camera Loves You & The Dreaming.
> 
> Done in 39 minutes (man I'm rusty).

The blizzard was picking up. The valley we were camped in was like a wind tunnel, funnelling the snow right into our faces and right through our coats. I could hardly feel my fingers. I could hardly feel my toes either—and I jogged a couple of times to make sure I wouldn't need to worry about losing them—but I couldn't focus on my body right now. It was the last thing I was thinking about.

Because of the _incredible_ vista in front of us.

The mountains rose out of the snow, grey and jagged, pushing upward and spreading completely across the horizon. Some of their surfaces were almost vertical walls of ice and storm clouds gathered around their peaks; it was like someone had purpose-designed them for exactly what they hid.

"The Lost City's up there," I said, "somewhere."

Sam's voice sounded a bit hesitant. "Yeah, about that…" She was grimacing when I looked at her. "Um, so, the other guys are done. I even offered them more money, but they think we're totally _crazy_ for setting a single foot up those things." She lifted her camera towards the peaks, watching the screen. "They _do_ look pretty damn scary, though. You remember how there was a big cloud over Yamatai? _Yeah_ …."

I touched her arm. "You can stay here, too, Sam. In fact, you probably should." It was a bit half-hearted, I admit.

She scoffed; she wasn't having any of it. "Like I've been hitting the gym for _five months_ for nothing!" She flexed as if her biceps were visible through her thick coat. It was probably best they weren't, because there wasn't much to show. Not that I'd ever tell her that unless I particularly felt like sleeping on the sofa. "I'll be fine. Plus, there's no Himiko here, right?"

I nodded. We both looked up at those ominous storm clouds.

"Well," she said, shutting the screen on her camera. "Since I've already got heaps footage of you just standing there staring at the mountains, you wanna…?" She made a walking motion towards them with her fingers.

I nodded slowly. "Yeah, we're close, I can feel it," I said, considering the ordeal ahead of us. I had no idea what we'd face in there; neither of us did. But we'd come this far and whatever _was_ there, we'd beaten worse than it before. That's what I told myself: we always came out on top, we always triumphed in the end. I just had to keep telling myself that… and somehow forget about what happened to Sam last time. I _couldn't_ think about that. Not now.

I swallowed, looked back across at her. "I'm not turning back, Sam." I just felt like I had to warn her.

The half-smile she gave me… "I know," she said casually, and passed me my two climbing axes. "So let's get going."


	31. Breaking Bread

Alex wouldn't exactly have called himself unpopular in high school. He always had plenty of friends, even a couple of girlfriends even if he wasn't that into them.

Uni was a whole different kettle of fish. He'd done the first year of electrical engineering in Chicago, made exactly zero friends and spent a lot of quality time with Chinese take away and several old Apple Macs he was gutting turning into weird PC-Mac Franken-Apples. What he'd essentially created was this amazing synergy between the old and the new, the Apple and the PC, the uncool and the cool… and he'd also been given a 'C' with the comment, 'Alex. No'. Those idiots didn't know genius when they were staring into the perfectly restored cathode ray tube screen of it.

That was when he'd decided to transfer to England, where hot British girls would think his generic American accent was 'cute'.

Actually, that was the first thing Sam had ever said to him. He'd been holding up the line in the cafeteria, trying to explain to a very blank face exactly what was in a Reuben when a bubbly Asian girl had leaned over to him. She was chewing gum, and she was close enough that he could smell it on her breath. "Cute accent," she had said. It had taken him a second to realize she was being sarcastic, because she also had a US accent. They'd quickly become friends, and that's when he'd been introduce to Sam's best friend, the elusive Lara Croft.

Fuck, she was hot. Not in a Sam way, though. Sam could pull off the most scandalous outfit and get away with the most outrageous behaviour and, sure, she was hot, but she was US hot. Lara was British hot. 'Glasses-girl' hot, without the glasses. She was smart. She was smart enough to be in engineering. She would have made a great electrical engineer, Alex thought, if she'd been exposed enough to the subject to have discovered how fascinating it was.

Alex was pretty good looking, he thought. He knew he was no David Beckham, but girls batted their eyelashes it him from time to time and on the days he forgot to shave there was probably a rugged attractiveness to him.

So when Lara invited him to her twentieth despite the fact they weren't that close, boy was he psyched for it. He even set an alarm on his hybrid clock-mirror (a personal invention) to remind him not to shave. He'd been working for a straight week on her present, too.

When he got to the restaurant –Japanese, of course, Lara had some weird thing about Japanese stuff – he was surprised and disappointed to see that Lara had invited something like ten to twelve other people including two or three other boys. Lara was dressed up, though, which made it all worth it. Sam must have had somehow managed to get her into a dress, because there was no way she'd have voluntarily worn one. He made sure he sat across from her so he could weave his way into her conversations (and not at all so he could look down the gaping neckline of that dress).

Sam sat next to him, and her dress was so short he could see the gap at the top of her thighs. It was distracting, especially since he was here for Lara.

"Uh, don't we need to put napkins in our laps?" he asked to no one in particular.

"No," Lara said, and he felt like a total idiot. "They don't do that in Japan. You can use a fork if you're no good with chopsticks."

Beside him, Sam was moving in on the guy sitting on the far side of her. He looked far more the David Beckham-type and far more interested in taking advantage of her short dress than Alex was.

When it was time to open presents, Lara spent a good five minutes uncomfortably complaining she'd told everyone not to buy her things before she actually opened a single one. He hadn't been sure how close Lara was with this large number of people, but judging by the number of scented candles, gift cards and spa-packs, probably not that close. It made him feel really confident about the moment when Lara would open his present.

It was in a tiny little box. She picked it up and checked the tag, looking suspiciously at him with a very slight smile. "What could this be?" she asked him. He gestured at her to open it as coolly as he could, despite the fact he wanted to jump out and down and rave about it. She eventually managed to get past all the ribbons and took out Alex's greatest creation yet: a Frankenpod.

Lara squinted at it. "Uh, it's very nice," she said, but she looked uncomfortable. "What is it?"

This was Alex's opportunity to gush. "Well, you know how you were saying that you hate the fact that you can't sync your iTunes music onto a non-standard iPod? Well," he said, leaning forward, "I'll spare you the technobabble, but I took the circuitry out of the generic device and cracked open a first-generation iPod." He paused. "Actually their technology is still pretty impressive, even by today's standards. Anyway, I used some bridges I created myself to patch them through and," he gestured at the small device, "tada! Now you have a hacked mp3 player that functions like PC but has the guts of an iPod and works perfectly with iTunes. Pretty cool, huh?"

She didn't look as impressed as he had expected her to. He'd even painted the thing a nice gun-metal grey so it matched her MacBook, but she didn't notice. "Thanks," she said. At least that sounded genuine, which rescued Alex's mood a little. "You must have put a lot of work into this. I appreciate it."

He then got an across-the-table hug out of it.

Last was Sam's present. She'd been dancing around the table beside him and had even been neglecting Football Jock for at least ten minutes. Her box was bigger than Alex's, and had a big Fragile sticker on it.

"Open it!" Sam was practically dying with excitement.

Lara did. Inside was some old shell bracelet thing which looked like it might fall apart at any minute. Not that Alex really understood any of that girl stuff, but it was also kind of ugly.

Lara swallowed with emotion when she saw it, and probably not because it was hideously ugly. Looking up at Sam like she couldn't believe it, her eyes glistened. "Sam, is this what I think it is?" she asked, sounding at any moment like she might burst into tears.

Sam just looked smug. "You tell me, Ms. Archaeologist."

Lara used the fingertips on both hands to delicately lift it from the box and hold it up to the light. She turned it over. "Oh, God," she said, looking up at Sam again and then hungrily back at the old bracelet in her hands. "It is! It's from the Kobun period, isn't it?" She swallowed again before speaking in hushed tones. "Can you even imagine the people who would have worn this, fifteen hundred years ago?" She shook her head and then looked incredulously at Sam. "You're just brilliant. How did you even get this?"

Sam smiled indulgently and tapped her nose. "Come here."

Lara very carefully put the treasured object down and rushed around the table to give Sam a long, firm hug. Sam was giggling. "Lara," she said in a strained voice. "You're suffocating me."

"I can't help it! I'm just so happy!"

Alex had to admit that while it was kind of endearing watching Lara get all choked up about an old bracelet, it was wasted on Sam. What was Sam going to get out of it? She was already best friends with Lara. She could have at least waited until Lara's actual birthday tomorrow and let him bask in the glory of creating new technology especially for Lara.

Gift time over, Sam got stuck straight back into Football boy and Lara laughed politely at various people's (unfunny, in Alex's opinion) jokes and pushed her food around the plate.

To be honest, Alex was pushing his food around, too. He'd ordered something without knowing what it was and it clearly had wheat in it.

Lara noticed. "Don't like Japanese food?" she asked him.

He shook his head. "Nah, I love it. It just doesn't love me." He patted his stomach. "I'm coeliac."

Lara looked alarmed. "Oh!" she said. "Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry. Why didn't you say? We could have ordered you something that you could eat." In the middle of actually saying that, she looked down at her fish-rice thing. "Would you like some of mine?" she said. "I'm really not all that hungry."

"On your birthday?" he said, absolutely delighted to be having an actual conversation with her, one-on-one. "That's tragic. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to stuff yourself full of junk food and alcohol and pass out."

She smiled. "Well. I suppose I'm tragic then."

He panicked. He hadn't meant it like that. "Uh—" he said quickly. "What I mean to say is, I'm not about doing the normal thing, either." He winced. Real smooth, Mr. Weiss, real smooth.

Despite the fact he was an idiot, the little smile she gave him – killer. He was never going to get it out of his head. She lifted her plate off the table and held it towards him. "Go on," she said. "Let's swap and get stuffed together."

Well, how could he say no to that? He accepted her plate and tucked into the fish-rice thing, getting it everywhere because he failed at chopsticks. At least Lara looked entertained by it.

"So, if you're coeliac, what's your favourite food?" she asked, her eyes flickering between him and something else. "I've always wondered what it would be like."

He laughed darkly. "Honestly? Bread." She looked surprised, so he explained. "It's like the one thing I can't eat and I always want it. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment." He waited, but she didn't catch on. "Get it? 'Gutton' about food and 'punishment'… okay, forget it."

Lara made a face. "Sorry, I suppose I'm a little distracted by what's happening next to you."

Alex had been so focused on Lara that he hadn't even noticed than Sam was practically mashing faces with Football. Football had broken the Japanese restaurant code and had a napkin in his lap.

Alex looked back at Lara. "Okay…" he said at length. "I didn't expect to see that."

Something passed over Lara's face. "I did." She quickly changed the topic. "So, if you love bread, it must be awful to never be able to eat it."

He sighed. "Hoo, yeah," he said. "Every time I see someone else eating it when I can't, this part of me goes, 'Hey! Life is unfair! Everything sucks! Grow your hair and live in your mom's basement!'" He leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his short hair. "You don't even know," he said. It was a figure of speech, but Lara seemed to have a reaction to it.

"Don't I?" she said, looking completely vulnerable for exactly half a second before becoming horrified with herself. "Okay, I think I need some air," she said, standing and excusing herself. "I'm being a total spoil-sport."

He watched her half-walk, half-jog outside, torn. Usually when a girl did that, it was either a total brush off, or an invitation. With Lara, though, it was difficult to tell. She was certainly being pretty nice to him and she hadn't been making snide comments, so it probably wasn't a brush off. But he didn't think it was an invitation, either.

He spent a few minutes shoveling the fish-rice thing down his throat while he agonized over whether or not to follow her. In the end, he decided that the nerds of the Internet were usually full of wisdom and that 'YOLO' was, in fact, the correct course of action here.

He would have excused himself, too, but the only other person he knew was Sam and she was basically in Muscle-Brain's lap. He didn't bother.

It had been raining – well it was England – and it was fucking freezing outside. Alex had brought his coat, but Lara hadn't thought to bring hers and she was sitting on the low fence out the front of the restaurant shivering and breathing clouds of steam into the air. At least it gave him a fool-proof cut-in.

"Hey," he said. "Here," he gave her his jacket.

She looked up and him and smiled. She'd been crying, and that made him panic. Fuck, he was hopeless at this stuff. He completely expected to watch himself screw this all up in a manner so spectacular it required pyrotechnics. Somehow while he was panicking, though, he'd managed to help her put on his jacket. It was far too big for her, and looking at her swimming in it got to him.

She was beautiful. Hell, she was perfect. Why on earth were there any other women in the world? God should have stopped when he got to this one.

"Look at me," she said, holding up the floppy sleeves and getting emotional over them. "It's my birthday and I'm crying in the rain. You were right. I am tragic."

"I didn't mean it like that," he said, sitting down beside her. He kind of wanted to touch her comfortingly in some way, but didn't want it to seem like he was being a sleaze. He reached out and patted her arm awkwardly. It was so awkward, in fact, that she just looked at him. "Yeah, I know, sorry. I suck that this," he said. They both laughed a little. He put his arm around her instead, and she leaned into it.

His heart fluttered a little when she relaxed her head against his collarbone and sighed. "You're nice," she said. "You don't have anything to be sorry about."

Yes, I do, Alex thought. He was having all sorts of inappropriate thoughts about kissing her, and having that kiss turn into something where that jacket and the dress underneath it would come off. But—he told himself, he wasn't one of those guys. He would treat her right. He would cook her breakfast, even. Hell, he'd do anything. Alex. No. "Is it kind of presumptuous of me to ask you what's up? Or is crying in the rain a normal girl thing?"

She laughed once. "No," she said. "Not that I'm the authority on normal girl things, to be honest. You'll need Sam for that." She sighed again.

Alex made a humming noise. "Yeah, well," he said. "I'd ask her myself but she seems a little busy."

Lara didn't say anything. For a few uncomfortable seconds he thought he might have said the wrong thing and blown it, especially when he realized she was crying again.

"Shit," he said, and then panicked. "I mean, not 'shit', I mean whatever is the appropriate thing to say when a girl is crying and she shouldn't be because she's too awesome to cry like this."

That made her laugh again. "You're hopeless," she told him affectionately, wiping her tears on the oversized sleeves of his jacket.

"Hey, that's Mr. Hopeless to you," he said. "Actually, who am I kidding? You can just drop the title. I'm cool with that."

"Now that you've seen me cry I'm sure we're on a first-name basis," she said. "I'll be 'Tragic' and you can be 'Hopeless'."

"Sounds like a great couple," he said, and then winced again. Too soon, Alex!

She didn't seem to notice. Her hair was under his chin, and since it seemed like the appropriate thing to do, he stroked it. It was just so soft and fine, and it smelt like apples. He wanted to run it through his fingers and pull that ponytail out so it was loose around her beautiful shoulders…

"Alex," she said. She had a funny tone in her voice.

His hand froze on her scalp. "Sorry, is that not okay?"

She ignored his question, pulling away a little. "Can I tell you something I've never told anyone?"

What a question. "Yeah, of course."

She sat up away from him. "This is such a strange thing to say, but I really feel like I need to tell you," she said. "You're so warm and supportive and, well, nice."

"Is that what you wanted to tell me?" he said jokingly, and then immediately regretted it.

She play-scowled at him. "No," she said, sobering up again. "It's something secret. I've never told anyone."

This close to her, it would just take a little lean in to kiss her. To feel that tongue that was nervously wetting her lips on his lips and to part that jacket down the middle and let it fall open as he lay her back on the stone fence. He didn't think he was some incredible stud or anything, but by his assessment he was pretty okay in bed. Okay enough to make her forget about whatever was upsetting her. Several times, maybe.

He couldn't do that, though. That would be way inappropriate when she was this sad. Maybe he could just lift her hair from her cheeks and kiss the tears from them. Fuck, she was beautiful, and she was about to confide in him.

She had been expecting him to respond, and when he didn't she looked a bit unnerved. "Alex?"

"You're beautiful," he told her suddenly, and then could have taken off his own sneaker and shoved it down his throat.

She laughed awkwardly and smacked him playfully with the sleeve of his jacket. "Stop it," she said, and he realized she thought he was still joking. "I know what I look like when I cry, you don't have to rub it in!"

Wary of screwing up again, he decided not to explain he'd been serious.

She stopped laughing and looked down again. "I've kept it to myself so much that I feel like I'm going to burst," she said. Alex knew exactly what she meant. "But I really feel like I can open up to you. You're just so lovely to me."

He beamed.

She smiled dimly. "God, it's been killing me," she said. "Alex," she said, and then seemed to struggle to say the anymore. More tears rolled down her cheeks. This time, he felt like he was allowed to dry them, so he did, gentle with the back of his knuckles.

"Whatever it is," he said. "Lara, I'll help you through it. We can do it together."

She nodded mutely, gathering the strength to tell him. He waited patiently like the nice guy he knew he was, giving her all the time she needed. He wondered if she were going to tell him about her parents – he already knew because Sam had accidentally told him once before. Or maybe it was about the fact her best friend seemed to have no problem nailing guys, maybe she was insecure about that?

Well, whatever it was, he would be there for her. He would do anything for her.

"I'm in love with her," Lara said, and then dissolved into tears. "Sam. I'm such an idiot. All she wants to do is bed-hop with the entire team of Arsenal and all their paid members."

Did she just say…? For a second Alex didn't think he'd heard right. He just stared at her. 'Her'?

It was entirely the wrong response, because Lara looked up at Mr. Nice Guy clearly expecting to see comfort and instead saw shock and surprise. She looked stricken. "What am I doing?" she said, pushing away from him. "God, I'm such an idiot."

"No!" he said, trying to catch her as she went to stand up. "Lara, it's not like that, I just—"

She nodded, her jaw tight. "I know what 'it's just'," she said. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have brought you into this. Here," she took off his jacket and handed it to him, trying to wipe her eyes. "I think it's time for me to go home anyway. Best birthday ever."

Alex watched her duck back inside the restaurant, return outside and then disappear down the street at a desperate jog with more tears streaming down her beautiful pink cheeks.

No one followed her.

Nice work, Mr. Hopeless, Alex thought bitterly as he sat back down on the fence and stared down at the tear-stained jacket. Not only had he just screwed up the most important thing that had happened to him all year and spectacularly upset the sweetest girl ever, he was hopeless.

There's a whole university full of gorgeous women who would totally fall for his cute accent and neat gadgets and what was he doing? He'd somehow managed to order bread.


	32. Checkmate - SAM (POV)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set between Chapter 45 and The Epilogue of The Dreaming. Lara can sometimes be a little bit too helpful.

"Worst holiday _ever_ ," I said as I flopped back into the armchair in our hotel room. Our last night in Australia, and it had to be the middle of a record-breaking heatwave. It actually felt like someone had just put a giant vacuum cleaner over Darwin, sucked out all the air and replaced it with _hot._

Over my head, the ceiling fan spun uselessly. The hotel _was_ air conditioned, but it must have been about fourteen million degrees outside because it was no match for the heat radiating through the floor to ceiling windows. Between draping myself over various items of furniture I'd noticed the view of Darwin was totally amazing, but I was too exhausted to even stand up and get a few seconds of footage of it. _That's_ how I knew it was _really_ awful weather. "Like, I know people say Australia is dangerous but I didn't seriously think I'd _actually_ nearly die here." I gestured loosely at the sun glaring through the windows. "First of the whole Natla thing and now _this_."

"I'll turn up the air con in a moment," Lara told me as she tried to shove a pillow down behind Min.

The night before, Bree had been exercising her new-found legality by purchasing a whole bottle of banana vodka and because Min and Lara weren't big drinkers and I wasn't even _allowed_ to drink for another four weeks, she'd downed it herself. All of it, in just under an hour. Then I'd got some _hilarious_ footage of her trying to jump Min in front of us while she slurred and giggled. Min had just been sitting there sighing and very neatly peeling Bree off like it might be something she did on a fairly regular basis. Eventually Bree had passed out and Min had somehow managed to wheel them both into the second bedroom.

Bree was _still_ unconscious this morning, but probably at least part of it was a godawful hangover.

But now that Bree was out of it, Lara felt guilty about Min and was hovering around her and stressing. Min had been comfortably reclined on the couch minding her own business, and did _not_ look pleased about Lara's sudden need to take care of her. She was giving Lara the same tired expression she frequently gave Bree.

When Lara went to 'help' Min rearrange the cushions _again_ , Min stopped just silently enduring her and took her arm. "Lara," she said flatly. "I'm lying here because it's fucking hot, not because I couldn't sit up if I wanted to."

"But I just thought that—"

"I know you did, but I'm good." I saw Lara's eyes pass over Min's wheelchair beside the couch. So did Min. "I know you're trying to help, but you don't need to," she told Lara more gently as she let her arm go.

Lara just stood up and looked kind of lost for a moment before settling down in the other armchair opposite the TV. There was some totally boring serial on and it was shot by people who had no idea how to direct. They were using basically one angle the whole scene and if I wasn't so angry that people were actually _paid_ to film this crap _,_ it would have put me to sleep. Unfortunately, despite the heat, it wasn't putting Lara to sleep, either. She was sitting staring at the TV but kept glancing uncomfortably at Min.

Eventually her latent guilt got too much for her and she couldn't contain herself. "Are you sure you don't need anything?" she asked. "Because it's no bother for me to get you a water or something."

Min looked across at me, and her expression made me burst out laughing. She looked like she was seriously about to kill a man. When she spoke, though, there was no trace of it in her voice. "Actually some water would be good."

When Lara leaped up and practically skipped into the adjoining kitchen, I yelled after her very pointedly, "Yeah, I could use some water, too, Sweetie, thanks for asking!"

Min had this strange expression on her face, like crossed between pain and concentration. "No offense, but your girlfriend is driving me fucking crazy."

I snorted. _She_ couldn't talk. "You're dating _Bree_ ," I reminded her. "So isn't that kind of what you're into? And, besides, on the scale of normal to Bree, Lara is about negative a hundred."

Min narrowed her eyes at me, but couldn't say anything to that as Lara returned with two glasses of water. At least she had the decency to serve her girlfriend first. I was already taking a big mouthful when she gave Min's glass to her.

Min peered critically down into the glass for a few seconds. "Wow, this water's gross. Maybe I'll have a coke instead. I could use the sugar, anyway."

"Really?" Lara asked. "It looks alright to me. It tastes alright, too, just a bit warm. I had some earlier." She leant over to examine the water for herself. Even though she obviously couldn't see what Min was talking about, but went back into the kitchen for the coke anyway.

Min watched her go and then drank the entire glass of water in one movement. When Lara came back in with the coke, Min casually handed her the empty glass and then stared at the coke, looking a little disappointed. "Could I have it in a mug instead?" she asked innocently. "Do you mind? It's just easier for me to hold, and without the nice big handle I might spill it all over me…"

Lara did actually look a _little_ frustrated, especially as her eyes darted between Min and the empty glass of water she'd been given. She didn't comment on it, though, she just smothered whatever reaction she was having and trekked back into the kitchen _again_.

When Min looked over at me, her eyes were _twinkling._

My jaw fell open. _Min,_ no way! "You are _not_ messing with her, are you?"

She just grinned and put her index finger over her lips. "Oh, I _so_ am."

Lara returned with the mug and passed it to Min, who then pretended to 'accidentally' spill it all over her clean t-shirt.

I lost it and nearly sprayed water out of my mouth. Min's face rested in this glorious deadpan, you'd never in a million years have thought she was anything except completely genuine. "Shit!" she said, pretending to be horrified by the coke stain on her white t-shirt, "Shit!" Lara hurriedly took the mug from her and put it on the table.

"It's okay, I'll get some paper towels!" she reassured Min, rushing back into the kitchen again and then loudly and frantically rummaging around in the cupboards in there.

"You're _terrible_ ," I told Min, but I was laughing at Lara's panic. "Lara's just trying to be nice!"

Min just shot me that charming smile. "I know," she said at the bottom of her voice. "But admit it, Sam, you're enjoying it." There was no mistaking the mischief in her voice. Was she actually…? She was flirting, I think. But I'm pretty sure she was only doing it to mess with _me._

I rolled my eyes at her. "By the way? That suave thing you do totally doesn't work on me."

She flashed me some teeth with the next grin. "Not even with the cute accent?"

I groaned audibly. "Oh, my God," I told her. "You're as bad as a guy."

She was still watching me, and it was unnerving, even if I totally wasn't into her and she knew it. "I'm surprised it's not working, then," she said neutrally, and then copied what I'd said before with exaggerated intonation, "Isn't that kind of what you're into?'." While I was just _glaring_ at her, she winked. "And, thanks, by the way."

If I wasn't practically dying of heat exhaustion, I would have run over there and strangled her. She was _not_ allowed to use that wink thing. _I_ did the wink thing, that was _my_ thing!

Lara came rushing back in with the roll of paper towels, tearing off a handful of them mid-stride and then pushing them all against Min's chest. Min looked over and me with a smug, well-concealed grin. After only a few seconds, Lara remembered that Min _wasn't_ a guy and that in blotting Min's chest, she was, well, blotting Min's chest. She stood up, panicking. "Sorry!" she said, giving all the towels to Min. "I didn't thing that—I mean, I—"

I was _laughing_. Min was _bad_ , and although I was _totally_ going to get revenge on her somehow, watching her so easily playing Lara was the height of entertainment.

At my open laughter, Lara stopped, looking over at me and then back at Min. Min had the most blank, innocent expression – how in the hell did she even do that? It made me laugh even harder.

"Are you having me on?" Lara asked us eventually. "Both of you?"

Min shook her head earnestly. "Of course not, Lara."

Lara's brow was wavering as she looked back over at me. I was laughing so much it was really hurting the wound on my stomach. I put my hand over it and tried to laugh more gently, but that just made me feel like I was going to give myself an aneurism.

Unfortunately I've always been totally transparent and Lara got her answer just by looking at my face. She turned sharply to Min. "You _are_ ," she accused her, and then wrenched one of the cushions from under Min and smacked her across the head with it. "I was _worried_ about you!"

Min threw her hands up to protect herself, the completely deadpan expression cracking as she started laughing as well.

When Lara was through pretending to beat Min up, she tossed the cushion back at her. "Okay, okay," she said, walking over to sit on the chair she'd been on before. "You've made your point."

Min put the paper towels on the table next to her and folded her hands behind her head, relaxing against them. "Good," she said soberly with a warm smile. "Because, like I keep saying, I actually am fine and you don't need to worry about me."

Lara smiled back at her like they were sharing something. I didn't like this whole bonding thing at all. Like, I was happy for Lara to have friends, but I didn't want them to be _too_ close, because wasn't _I_ supposed to be her best friend?

"Yeah," I said pointedly, "she's not the one who _nearly died_. And _I_ don't have some weird pride thing about people doing stuff for me." I pressed gently over my stitches just to test if I'd torn anything while I was laughing. It was tender like it always was, but it seemed okay. My stomach growled, though. "And actually, I'm kind of hungry. Maybe something that resembles a burger?"

Lara glanced over toward the window at the hot sun and sighed. "Okay," she said reluctantly, standing out of the chair and looking miserable at the prospect of heading out into the inferno. "I'll go look about and see what I can find. No burgers, though. You're not even supposed to be having animal proteins yet."

"That's right," I grumbled, remembering the nephrologist's instructions, which were basically to stop enjoying life for six weeks. "Although those cheesy burgers from downstairs almost look worth the risk."

"I will kill you if you eat one and die from it," Lara said, dropping a kiss on my head and then grabbing her wallet as she headed out onto the surface of the sun. She made a face as she closed the door. "Even the _hallway_ is awful."

After she left I looked back toward Min to catch Min's eyes lingering on the door, at waist level. She caught me looking and watched me soberly for a few moments. She didn't say anything, though. She didn't even try and joke about it. She just smiled at me, and I'm pretty sure it was real.

I nearly had an aneurism again. I really wanted to be angry with her for checking out my girlfriend, but not only was it too hot to think, that smile was basically like, 'I know, I like you both and I'm going to keep my hands off'.

Ugh, just _ugh_. And that stain on her shirt was totally mocking me. "I hope you realize you wrecked a perfectly good t-shirt for the sake of messing with Lara."

Min looked down and it and shrugged. "Worth it," she said. "And to be fair, Bree will probably ruin it by washing it with my jeans in the next week or two anyway. Its days as a white t-shirt were already numbered. I just gave it a heroic death."

That, I had to laugh at, despite the fact I wanted to be angry. "I love how casually you say that: 'Bree wrecks my stuff'."

Min chuckled. "She does. That's worth it, too. All of it."

Then stop checking out my girlfriend, I thought. I was being ridiculous, though, since she was pretty clearly flagging that she wasn't going to do anything, and I knew I could trust Lara not to, anyway. And that's _if_ Lara was even interested, since she certainly hadn't _seemed_ interested. Just oblivious. Still, that whole messing-with thing and now the checking-out thing… Well, two could play at this game.

I got up up carefully, minding my abdominals and just stood there for a moment waiting for her to ask me what I was doing. She didn't, but she did look quizzically at me.

"I'm going to go and sleep with Bree," I announced. I didn't mean it like that at all, but watching her for the fraction of the second she thought I _did_ mean it that way was _so_ worth it.

Take that, I thought, feeling pretty pleased with myself.


	33. Dinner Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam takes Lara on that date she promised in The Camera Loves You. From Sam's POV, one-shot Lara/Sam.

Seriously? My best friend has the most _hardcore_ poker face. Like, some of the time, you'd never have any idea what she's thinking unless she opens her mouth and actually says something.

So we're sitting here at this restaurant – which, by the way, is one of the most _awesome_ restaurants in Tokyo, it's won a million Michelin stars or whatever – and she's just sitting across from me, looking around us with that completely neutral expression. There are heaps of people in this place because it's always totally booked out, and the sound level is kind of high. Lara looks nervous, at least, I _think_ it's nervousness. I could have just smacked myself in the forehead. Sam, you're an idiot, she has that weird thing about crowds now.

"Hey, Sweetie," I begin, reaching across the table toward her. "If you're not comfortable here, it's totally fine if we go find somewhere quieter."

She looks at me as if she's surprised I'm there. "No…" she says, fiddling with the butterknife, "I was just thinking that—" she shakes her head as if to get her train of thought out of it, "—never mind."

She's got a pretty tight grip on that poor butterknife. I lean across the table before she hurts it or herself and take it from her. She lets me, realizing only at that point how white her knuckles were on it. I place it gently down beside her.

She smiles at me and sighs. "Sorry," she says self-consciously, "I guess I'm still a little on edge."

That actually reminds me that we don't have the wine list. I make eye-contact with one of the waiters and he nods, but he's in the middle of doing something else.

"Look at everyone," she says. "I feel so completely out of place here. I stick out like a sore thumb."

I do look around, and it must be pretty unsubtly because Lara looks uncomfortable and mumbles something about not being so obvious. All I can really see heaps of couples and some staff buzzing around. They are all Japanese, though. "You mean because you're white?"

She gives me a _look_ , like I should totally be able to read her mind. I shake my head at her, I'm sure my face is blank. She rolls her eyes and doesn't elaborate.

Maybe it's something to do with the fact that _Lara Croft: Tomb Raider_ aired a few days ago, and the fan mail is starting to pour in. People are recognizing her. It's just so awesome to see people coming up to her and bowing so deeply their necks practically snap. She deserves all of it, from the shrill fangirls to the shy teenage boys. Yesterday she even had this _salaryman_ come up to her and start giving us this long lecture about the importance of history and how thankful he was that Lara was bringing legends back to pop culture.

She gets this delighted, disbelieving smile when people do it, and she still blushes. It's just the cutest thing ever. If she hadn't made me swear that I wouldn't jump her in public, I'd totally maul her every time she does it.

The waiter comes over. He double-takes when he sees Lara, but is professional enough to hide it rather well.

"We need alcohol," I tell him. Lara's eyebrows go up. "What's your best champagne?"

He doesn't even bat an eyelid. "Would you like to see the wine list?"

"Nope," I say. "Just whatever the best champagne is will be fine. We'll take the bottle."

Lara shoots me one of those looks again. "Well, _I_ would like to see it," she says to the waiter. "Thank you."

He bows his head and the goes to retrieve it.

"You'll feel better with alcohol," I promise her. "Whatever the problem actually is."

She sits back in her chair with her hands in her lap. She's wearing one of the raglan tees I bought for her, and it falls off one of her shoulders, showing the blue strap of one of her bras. I recognize that bra because I bought it for her, too: it's a sports bra. She's wearing a _sports bra_ in five star restaurant. I don't know what sort of jarring aerobic activity she thinks she's going to do in here, but it's kind of cute. She'd wear boots and cargos to dinner, too, if she thought she could get away with it.

By the way, she totally can't get away with it. I don't get to see her in nice clothes very often and I'm not missing any opportunity to force her to wear them.

"It's not really a problem," she says eventually. "I'm just used to being able to quietly go about my day without anyone noticing me. It's really odd to have everyone know who I am." She paused, looking up at me. "And to know who you are to me."

I had thought she said she didn't actually mind people knowing we're together, but I guess it's one of those things you can theoretically be okay with and when it actually happens it's kind of weird. "You'll get used to it," I tell her. "Besides, they don't _really_ know what we are to each other. They're just guessing."

She nods slowly. "Yeah, I know. Like I said, it's not really a problem. It's just different."

I unfold one of the menus and place it in front of her. "Order whatever you want," I tell her, smiling. "My treat."

Lara being Lara, she immediately looks for prices on everything. I watch her run her eyes over the menu, flip it, and then look around the room when she can't find them. "How do you know how much each dish is?"

I grin. "Good restaurants don't put the prices on their menus." I watch her frown at me. "Because anyone who cares about them can't afford to eat here." There's concern on her face and I wave it away. "It doesn't matter, anyway, I just got paid."

She doesn't look any less unsettled as the waiter returns with a wine list which he places in front of her. He also has a bottle of champagne which he very ceremoniously opens and pours an inch into my flute to taste. I test it by throwing it into the back of my throat. "Yes, it does appear to be alcohol," I tell him, using very polite language which I find to be an amusing contrast to what I'm actually saying. "You can leave the bottle."

"Are you sure you wouldn't like me to pour it for you?" he asks. He and Lara share a look like they don't know if leaving all of it with me would be a very good idea. It's hilarious.

It's terrible that I still enjoy messing with stuffy waiters. "You mean I can't drink it straight from the bottle?"

" _Sam_ ," Lara says, but she's got a big smile on her face. It's great to see it.

The waiter puts the bottle in the cooler beside the table, deciding to choose his battles. "As you wish," he says, and then leaves.

I've only had an inch of champagne, and I'm already giggling like I've had the whole bottle. Lara kicks me under the table, but she's also chuckling. "You got off lightly," I tell her, "I _wanted_ to tell him I'm trying to get you drunk."

She lifts the bottle out of the cooler and fills my flute and then her own, and then examines the label. Then, out comes the iPhone and she's Googling exactly what we're drinking. She's hopeless.

"Lara," I tell her, my eyes rolling in their sockets. "Stop being such a tightass, I told you it's totally fine, I'm paying for it all."

She tucks her cell away again. "I'm just not comfortable with it. I don't want to get into the habit of you paying for everything. I can pay for myself."

"Uh, it's a _date_ ," I remind her. "Getting a free dinner off someone who wants to hit that is kind of the point."

"But who says _you_ have to be the one paying?" she continues. "I know you're used to handing over your credit card when we're working because your dad just pays you back for expenses anyway. But you can't claim this. Why are we automatically assuming _you're_ paying for it?"

Oh, my God. This is just ridiculous. "Lara!" I lean forward and putting my hands over hers on the wine list. "Okay, I get it, you can support yourself. I know, I watched you kill yourself with like a hundred jobs at college. But I invited you here and I'm paying, okay?"

She makes a face. When the waiter returns, she orders the antipasto and gives him back the wine list without even ordering anything from it. Well, I'm not about to hold back. I order the beef and _matsutake_. What's the point of coming to a really expensive restaurant if you don't get the most expensive thing on the menu?

Before our food arrives, I'm demonstrating my Japanese half by folding our napkins into paper cranes. Lara watches me, grinning. "Two down, nine-hundred and ninety-eight to go," she says. "Isn't that how many you need to make a wish?"

I pour the remainder of the flute down my throat, and 'walk' the cranes up to each other to touch their beaks. "This is going to sound totally corny, but my two wishes already came true."

She smiles warmly at me. I expect her to ask what my other wish was, but she doesn't. Instead, she just watches me from behind her bangs. "Yeah," she says, taking a dainty sip of her own champagne, "I'm actually in no hurry to fold the rest, either."

She looks up at me and gives me this bashful smile.

I wonder what the likelihood is that the restaurant will let me slide my chair over beside Lara's so I can snuggle her the whole time we're eating. Probably higher than the chance Lara would let me do it, even when she is smiling at me like that.

I can't wait to be home in bed with her, desperately trying to convince her that Yoko can't hear anything we're doing. I'm yet to win that argument, but I'm pretty certain she can't hold out forever. Those sounds she was making in Croatia… Oh, my God. I help myself to another glass and fill it all the way to the lip. I top up Lara's, too, but she's hardly had any. "Keep drinking," I tell her.

Just takes another sip, but it's small so I suspect she's just doing it to humour me. I mock-glare at her, and she raises her eyebrows and takes another larger mouthful. "Why do I get the feeling I'm downing gold-label champagne like it's house wine at some dingy pub?"

"You're not 'downing' anything. You've had maybe half a glass," I point out. Meanwhile, I'm finishing off my second and well into 'tipsy'. I actually look at the bottle when I fill my flute for the third time: it _is_ nice champagne. I don't like my chances of remembering any brands I read now, so I just take a photo of the bottle with my cell.

She laughs at that. "Yes, better start taking photos. It means I won't have to tell you the story of what happened to you tonight tomorrow when you're completely hung over."

I take a photo of her, too, and then look at the screen as it loads. She's rolling her eyes at me in it, but she's still fucking beautiful. I don't know how she ended up being so much more photogenic than I am when my mom's the model, but I don't actually think I've ever managed to take a bad photo of her. Even when she's deliberately pulling faces. She's not even wearing any makeup and she's still just stunning.

"I'm right here, you know, you can actually look at the real thing," she says, grinning at me.

I look up at her, and hold the cell across so she can see the photo I just took. "You're gorgeous," I tell her.

She laughs. "And you are drunk already. One of my eyes is sort of closed in that picture."

This totally isn't drunk. I could still do a lap to the restrooms and back without falling over. I'm about to argue the point when our meals arrive.

It's on a plate the size of football field but I feel like I might need a magnifying glass to locate the actual food. For a moment I'm wondering if we messed up and ordered entrées instead of mains.

"I have a theory about these places," I tell Lara as I poke around my beef and mushroom fillet. "It's that the amount you pay for food is inversely related to the amount of it they actually give you."

Lara's antipasto is expertly laid out on the plate like a piece of culinary art. It's almost heresy that she doesn't take a photo of it before she starts wrecking it with her fork. "I have a feeling we'll need to stop by the Seven Eleven on the way home and buy sandwiches," she says. "I actually think in total they've given me five olives, two pieces of cheese and… whatever this is." She turns over a piece of brown mush to investigate it.

"It's a type of mushroom," I tell her, and then look down at my mushrooms. "Maybe it needs some expensive company." I put some of my hundred-dollar _matsutake_ on her plate.

"That'll hold off starvation for at least a bit longer," she says, and then eats her five olives. Watching her mix the mushrooms together is hilarious for some reason.

She watches me suspiciously while I'm giggling at her, very slowly putting her fork to her mouth. After she's finished chewing, she says, "That's enough champagne for you, I think," and reaches for my glass.

I quickly lift it up and pour all of it down my throat, and then give her the empty flute. She looks from me to it. "You do realize these are more than one standard drink, right?" she says, using her I Used to be a Barmaid tone.

I'm grinning at her while she examines the glass. "Are you going to throw me out of the bar?" My head's swimming at little, but it's really pleasant and I'm certain that I don't actually _look_ drunk yet. Of course, I only just threw back glass three, so there's a good ten minutes before it kicks in. I should probably use this time to eat my own meal instead of watching her eat hers.

I arrange the mushrooms and beef to make a smiley face, instead. Then I spend a good five minutes admiring my own genius and giggling uncontrollably.

"I would call you a taxi at this point if I were working," she says. "I'm almost ready to put ten quid on the likelihood I end up needing to carry you out of here."

I scoff. "Three glasses? I'll walk out of the place _in_ my heels."

To demonstrate, I stand up and go to the restroom. It turns out I'm not as steady on my feet as I thought I'd be. I do, however, manage to make it there and back without breaking anything or injuring anyone. The waiters are all watching me with concern, though. I wave at them.

Lara has her head her hands when I get back to the table. I must have been gone longer than I thought, because our plates are gone. "Come on, Sam," she says, rubbing over her face. "Let's get you out of here."

She holds out her hand to me, but I sling my arm over her bare shoulder. "My ankle still hurts," I lie. "You'll have to carry me."

She looks around us. I notice a few people are surreptitiously watching, but this is a really rich crowd so I doubt they'll say anything. While she's looking away from me, she's exposing a whole length of smooth neck. I manage to succeed in not kissing it. To celebrate, I say, "Let's go home so I can do naughty things to you."

From behind us, a voice says, "Shall we call your driver?"

Oh, my God, he was _right_ behind me when I said that last thing. I burst into laughter, but smother it immediately with my hand so it turns into a kind of loud snort. Beside me, Lara looks like she might actually be about to die of embarrassment. Even that's kind of hot. "No, it's fine," she tells the waiter. "I'll take her home." She looks directly at me as he leaves, saying, "Do I need to gag you on the way out?"

I know it's just her way of telling me to be quiet, but it sends my mind to a different place than she intended. She's pretty good with ropes and knots and wonder if we could somehow use that for nefarious purposes. It's actually something I've never done before.

She's helped me out of the main restaurant and into the elevator while I'm stuck in _kinbaku_ -land.

It's one of those elevators with mirrors everywhere and I can see about eight copies of us. "We're so fucking hot together," I tell her as she chooses the 'G' button. When she leans back against the railing, I pose against her, pressing out bodies together and looking across in the mirror. I wonder about the possibility of getting my cell out and taking a shot.

She's rolling her eyes, but I'm sure it's affectionately. In the mirror I can see through to her bra under the armpit of the raglan tee. I put my hand through the hole.

"Sam," she says. It's a warning.

I totally ignore it. There's no one with us.

The most annoying thing about sports bras is that you can't get under them or over them. They're like a chastity belt for breasts. I try to kiss her, instead, but she won't let me. She puts her messenger bag between us as a final blockade. When I lean against it, her purse pokes me in the stomach.

Which kind of reminds me. "We didn't pay," I realize. Oh, my God, I can't believe I didn't notice. It's so terrible it's funny.

Lara looks smug. "Yes, we did."

 _That_ makes me take a step back. " _You_ paid?" She smiles. That sly bitch! I smack her playfully. "You took advantage of how drunk I was to pay for the dinner _I_ invited you to?"

"Well, you spent about fifteen minutes in the toilet, so I thought maybe you weren't feeling too good."

I narrow my eyes at her because I'm not sure if she's telling the truth or not. When her smile fades, she's got that poker face again. I just have no idea. "You should take up cards," I tell her. "You'd be really good."

She doesn't make the connection.

The elevator dings and we walk out onto the street. It's getting kind of cold so I hope it doesn't take us too long to get a cab. I still have my arm around Lara's shoulders, and my side is the warmest part of me.

She's looking at me with concern, and when I look back at her I fall over my stiletto. Because I'm holding her she comes right down with me. I hear a dull thump as I hit the pavement. Happily, I can't feel a thing except how cold it is.

Lara's expression… Oh, my God. Hilarious. You'd think I just got impaled on a pole or something. "Sam," she says, gasping. "God, that was your _head!_ "

It was? Because Lara is kneeling over me on all fours, instead of worrying about whether or not I've just grievously injured myself, I pull her on top of me and into a firm kiss.

She makes a noise like she's just swallowed a fly and pulls away from me. She scrambles off me and stands a good five feet away. "Okay, I get it, you're _fine_ ," she says, and she sounds angry. She's looking around us. There are people everywhere, but this is Japan. No one's going to say anything to us.

"No, _you're_ fine," I tell her. "So fine it borders on fucking gorgeous."

She helps me up, but she won't let me sling my arm around her any more as we catch a cab. She also banishes me to the other side of the back seat and won't let me touch her. I try repeatedly, anyway.

I personally don't really see what the big deal was about kissing her. Everyone knows we're together anyway, whether or not she plans to actually say anything about it. I mean, I get that she doesn't want to discuss it, but that doesn't mean that we have to walk around pretending we sleep in separate rooms.

Despite the fact she's giving me the Ice Queen treatment, I have big plans for what we'll do when we get home. However, while she's in the shower I accidentally fall asleep and I wake up the following morning without having ravaged her. Also, with a really awful headache. For a moment I can't figure out how I have it, because three glasses would normally never be enough to give me a hangover. As I roll over, I rest my head on a really tender part of my skull.

That's right. I bashed my skull in right before I kissed her in public and started World War III.

She's already awake and on her cell. She doesn't look very happy, and when she realizes I'm awake, she gives me a really hard stare. "Congratulations, Ms. Nishimura" she says, using the same name my dad's staff use to address me, and hands me her cell. "You did it again."

I take it, squinting at her. "I did what again?"

On the cell, there's a photo of us lying in the middle of a busy Tokyo street on top of each other and kissing. Most of the people around us are politely pretending not to look, but there's a couple of other people with their cells raised. Whoever took this photo took it at the exact second I had my mouth against hers, but because it's not video and they can't see that she pulled away immediately, it looks like we're completely going for it on the sidewalk.

Text on the image reads, 'I'm so straight I make the cops looks like Mexican drug lords.' There's another one beneath it that says, 'I'm so straight rulers use _me_ to draw margins.' It only takes a few seconds to figure out that that photo of us has become the latest Meme. Oh, God, and possibly my tombstone.

"We're trending," she says, snatching her cell back. "And you're sleeping in another room tonight."


	34. Ten Things I Hate About You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten connected drabbles from both Sam's and Lara's point of view about their friendship with each other.

1.

One thing I used to _hate_ about Sam when we first roomed together in boarding school was the fact that I never seemed to get a full night's sleep.

If it wasn't music blaring so loudly through her iPod headphones that _I_ could hear the tinny beats all the way over in my bed, it was her typing on her laptop to God knows who on the Internet at two in the morning. One night I got woken up by the fake shutter sound her iPhone under the covers... I don't even _want_ to know what that was about.

On several occasions she'd climb in the window, completely sloshed, and collapse in a fit of giggles on her mattress. She'd then proceed to tell me all the 'wild' stuff she'd just done while I held the pillow over my head and hoped it would be over soon.

The worst time was when I heard her tip-toe into through the door. She said something to me and I made a point of not opening my eyes and not replying. I could smell the alcohol even though most of my face was under my duvet.

A male voice whispered, "Wait, she's still here?"

Sam giggled. I could hear the sound of them kissing. "Don't worry about her, she won't mind."

I _wouldn't mind?_

I think Sam often confused the fact that I didn't throw things at her and scream with tacit acceptance of whatever she was doing.

I'm really quite amazed I did as well in my exams as I did, considering.

2.

Oh, my God, Lara, where do I start...

Lara has all this money, you see. Like, a lot of it. I'm not even exaggerating. After her parents died they left her this property somewhere out of London and a trust fund that must be worth like several million pounds or something. I don't know the exact amount right now because Lara redirects the mail from her accountant to some postbox in Surrey that she pays once a month.

This one time, I was going to Surrey to second camera on some amateur film production and I happened to be driving past the post office there. It was this tiny little place that looked like a family run business.

Okay, I'm totally not proud of what I did, but walked right in there and told them I was Lara's best friend and that I was there to collect her mail.

Probably under ordinary circumstances they wouldn't have let me actually do it, but apparently Lara had been sending the mail there for _years_ and it didn't fit in the box anymore. They didn't really know what to do with it since Lara always paid her bills on time. Instead of actually double-checking to make sure I wasn't some identify thief they just handed it all over to me in a canvas bag.

So then I had this shoe box full of letters from Lara's accountant in my closet.

I felt really bad about what I'd done for, like, weeks so I didn't even open any of them. One night when Lara was at work, it all got too much for me so I took out the box and stared at all the letters.

It couldn't really hurt to open _one,_ could it?

I took the envelope sitting on top of the pile and threaded my finger through the lip of it, tearing it open. Inside were two sheets of paper. One was a statement, and the other was a letter from 'Robertson & Robertson' asking Lara to please make a decision about the title on the property, since it was supposed to have been transferred to her on her eighteenth. The accompanying statement was like something I'd pull out of dad's drawer in the office while I was looking for something to write on. There were so many commas and digits and the numbers kept getting bigger as my eyes tracked down the page.

What the _hell_ was she doing working two jobs in crappy little bars for? She'd never need to work a day in her _life_ with all this money. I mean, I knew she had some money in her trust, but this was unbelievable. I didn't even think _my_ trust had that much money.

Then I was at this crossroads, because I really wanted to discuss it with her but I didn't want to tell her that I'd stolen all her mail.

So, I put it back in my closet.

When Lara came home that night it was well after midnight and her hand was bandaged. She didn't even say anything about it until I asked her, and then it was pretty much, "I broke up a fight," and then she took off her boots, went and lay in her bed with all her clothes on and started to doze off.

"What is with you and torturing yourself?" I asked her.

"Hmm?" she said, and then fell asleep.

It fucking sucks watching her do this to herself when she doesn't have to. It still does.

3.

Sam _knows_ I can't stand it when there's rubbish all over the kitchen, and yet she leaves wrappers everywhere and never rinses the cereal off her plates. It solidifies there like bloody concrete and I practically need a jackhammer to get it off.

When I mentioned this to her, shoulder deep in the amount of detergent I needed to scrub the gunk off, she just grinned at me. "I thought you said you liked to be challenged?"

Instead of helping she just walked over to the fridge, took swig of milk straight from the carton, and then wandered back into the living room.

I nearly lopped the slippery, cereal-encrusted bowl straight at her head.

4.

My dad fucking loves her. That's a big one for me. Like, I know he loves me, too, but whenever I've had her over he's always like, "Why can't you be more like Lara?"

This one time, I said to him, "Because I've got you and mom as my parents!"

Yeah, I had to move back to England after that.

Part of me still hates her for it, even though it's not her fault.

5.

I know Sam has this odd relationship with her parents.

I've only met her mum once when she invited Sam and I to LA. She's a retired lingerie and swimsuit model and there are pictures of her modeling hung all over the house. I can't tell you how incredibly uncomfortable it feels to see those sorts of photos of your friend's mother. She's also had a lot of surgery and spends a great deal of her time looking into reflective surfaces and scrutinizing her appearance. The weird thing is, I don't actually think it's vanity.

She's not that bad looking for her age, or she wouldn't be if she would stop getting her face all chopped up. Even though she's still very thin, while we were there she kept making comments about how having Sam wrecked her body and before Sam she was doing this or before Sam she was doing that.

We were actually going to stay a couple of weeks, but in the middle of the first night Sam woke me up and said, "Come on, let's go stay in a hotel." She'd been crying.

We went and did Vegas instead. I hate to say it about somewhere as completely commercial as that but I really had a lot of fun with her, despite her constant attempts to hook me up with various cute guys we'd come across.

So I understand why she gets upset at her mother.

She whinges a lot about her father, too. He's actually a rather nice man, we get along well. I think mainly he's just chuffed his daughter's best friend learnt Japanese for the sole purpose of studying the family's ancestors. He even told me once that he wished Sam had the same interest in Yamatai as I did.

I never had any of those same problems with my parents.

I loved them. I wanted to _be_ them. I still catch myself wishing I could tell Dad about something I've discovered or tell Mum about something I read. And back then, every time I noticed that debit from my bank account for the post box it reminded me that there was no one there to collect the letters anymore except me.

So when Sam complains about her parents I understand it, I really do. I just wish I had the luxury of being able to still complain about my parents, too.

I hate her a little bit for being able to do it.

6.

So Lara's not really a big fan of clubs. Usually I'll be able to drag her along and if I get enough alcohol into her I might be able to get her out onto the dance floor with me. If she's _really_ drunk she'll even dance a bit.

But I swear to God no man on earth is good enough for her.

We could be in a club with a hundred gorgeous guys and she'll be like, "Yeah, there's no one I'm interested in." I mean, what the hell? What does she want, exactly? Prince fucking Charming with a PhD in Archeology?

I remember this time when we were in Bulgaria when this, like, _amazingly_ hot guy just came and sat down next to her. He was Italian, and, like, _whoa._ He had that whole dark and dangerous think going for him and I think every woman in that place would have left with him in a heartbeat.

Every woman except Lara, that is. She did look him up and down, but she didn't look even half as impressed as I was. They said a few things to each other that I couldn't hear because of the music, and then she actually _stood up and walked away_.

She was _crazy._ I threw my arms up in the air as she approached me while I was waiting at the bar. "What are you doing?" I told her frantically, and tried to turn her around and push her back towards the guy. "He's like Zorro or something!"

"He's Italian," she said.

I didn't understand. "What? You have something against Italians?"

She shook her head. "No, Zorro is a Spanish character. He's Italian."

There are not enough forehead slaps in the world sometimes to cater for some of the stuff she says. "Oh, my God, whatever. Just go get some of that!"

She looked over at him and he made eye contact and winked at her. She turned back toward me, looking disgusted. "No, thank you." She tried to put some money in my hand. "Can you get me another Illusion?"

Seriously, I should just start buying her dozens of cats right now, because that's where she's heading.

7.

I bet one of Sam's is how much she hates the fact I don't share her hobby of sleeping with total strangers on a weekly basis. I would be willing to put quite a lot of money on it, actually.

Well, the feeling's mutual. I want to nail those revolving bedroom doors of hers completely shut.

I have this distant fantasy of being able to walk into our living room on Saturday morning without coming face-to-face with someone I've never met before in various states of undress. Sam used to actually bother to introduce me to them, now sometimes she just tells them where the food is and goes back to sleep. That results in me coming out to find George or Jack or whoever eating my cereal and drinking our tea.

At least they're usually courteous enough to offer me a cuppa.

I can't really tell Sam who she should and shouldn't be sleeping with. If I were given the option, I'd rather prefer if she didn't sleep with any of them, especially if she insists on parading them through our flat on a victory lap afterward. The alternative, though, is me insisting she go back to _their_ flats, but I don't really want Sam going back home with some complete stranger.

At least if she's here, I know she's safe. I do need to buy some better earplugs, though.

8.

Okay, this one going to sound _really_ awful because Roth is pretty much the closest thing Lara has to family. I know she spends a lot of time with me and we share an apartment, but I just really hate the way he's always the first one to know about everything important.

Lara gets a new job, she calls Roth. Lara gets good marks on an exam, she calls Roth. When she won the Scoresby Young Discovery award she actually went out to dinner with him, came home, showered, slept and woke up before she told _me._

I'm like, Lara, you could have woken me up with that news. I would have been so happy for you, we could have celebrated together.

I know tells him things that she doesn't tell me. That kind of hurts, you know? I'm supposed to be her best friend. I _am_ her best friend.

So why won't she talk to me about this stuff?

9.

I don't understand Sam, sometimes.

She may not always come across that way, but she's actually quite bright.

At uni all the lecturers used to laugh about her and the fact you never saw her anywhere without a camera in her hands. She always filmed the classes instead of taking notes and it became a running joke that perhaps they hadn't taught her to read and write in America. I think it bothered her a little, but not enough for her to make the effort to prove that she was anything more than a pretty girl with a trust fund and a media mogul for a father.

I know what she looks like. She watches the world through an LCD screen and always has assorted shopping bangs hanging off her arms. She also drinks like a fish and chats up anything with a pulse.

Sometimes people laugh at her behind her back – I can't stand it. They don't know what she's really like. If they'd only get her talking about lighting and composition they'd see that she knows what she's doing and she's incredibly well-versed in the topics she's passionate about.

She doesn't do herself any favours, either. She's happy to just let people assume she operates on a really superficial level. She even encourages it, sometimes.

When I came home from work one night, she was playing Ministry of Sound's latest house compilation on full blast. I could hear it in the shared corridor and as I jingled my keys, one of our neighbours stuck his head out and gave me a dirty look.

I winced. "Sorry, I'll tell her," I promised him.

Once I was inside, I followed the thumping bass up the short hallway and into her room. There was no point in knocking because she wouldn't be able to hear me, so I just opened the door.

She was sitting on her bed with her back to me, going through something. There were clothes absolutely everywhere.

"Playing dress-ups?" I asked her as I approached her to see what she was up to.

She startled, spinning around and looking at me with what I can only describe as abject horror. "What are you doing in here?" she asked me, sounding angry.

I stopped dead in my tracks. She never yelled at me and hearing it felt like a knife in my chest. "I actually came to tell you to turn the music down because it's after ten," I said. "But I suppose I'll just leave you alone, then."

I turned to leave, dazed. The music stopped abruptly. I'd made it halfway down the hallway when I heard brisk footsteps and the sound of her closet door shut. Then, she came after me. "Lara, I'm sorry, that was really awful of me," she said, taking my arm and preventing me from shutting myself in my own bedroom. "I was just, you know..." she shrugged. "Trying stuff on like I always do and you surprised me."

I watched her for a moment. She was lying to me. "What were you really doing?"

She winced. "Okay, Sweetie, don't kill me," she said. "I borrowed one of your sweaters and I pulled a thread in it."

I made a face. I'm not sure who she thought she was living with, because I was sure none of my 'sweaters' had any _unpulled_ threads left in them. Especially not after the expeditions Roth insisted on taking me on every six months. "Why would I care about that?" I asked her. "Which one, anyway? I just washed a load of them."

She looked panicked. I could see her eyes sweeping around the hallway, looking for an answer. That's when I realised she was lying _again._ I squinted at her, and then brushed her aside and marched back into her room and right up to the closet.

I wanted to find out what had her yelling at me and lying to me.

As I pulled the doors open, she came rushing up behind me and tried to push them closed by leaning on them. "No, Lara, please don't!"

I continued trying to wrench the closet open. "What's really in here, Sam?"

Eventually, she gave up. She went and sat on the bed, as if she were waiting for a jury to deliver a verdict. From the slump of her shoulders, it was obvious what she thought that was going to be.

I looked back inside her wardrobe, searching for whatever she'd quickly thrown in there and my eyes fell on a shoebox shoved underneath her winter coats. It had been stashed in there so quickly the lid wasn't even completely on.

I took it out, discarding the lid. Inside, there were a good hundred envelopes. All of them had my name on them, and they were addressed to my dad's postbox in Surrey.

My stomach dropped.

10.

Lara took out the opened envelope, completely silent. All of her previous determination was completely gone. She looked stunned.

I kept waiting for her to react, to hurl the whole box at me and started yelling what a crap friend I was, but she didn't. Lara wasn't really the yelling type, anyway, so I don't know why I expected her to do it. Maybe I just felt I deserved it or something. I probably deserved it a lot.

She didn't say anything. She put the opened envelope back on top of the pile of unopened ones and stood staring at them in her hands.

It was killing me.

After what felt like forever, she said, "There are just so many of them..."

That reminded me of what the post office staff had told me. "Actually they wouldn't all fit in the postbox," I said. "The post office didn't know what to do with them."

I saw her throat bob as she swallowed. "The accountant sends these once a month. There must be nearly a hundred here." She took a long breath, but it caught in her throat as she exhaled. "It feels almost like yesterday that dad and I would hop in the car and go to collect these together."

She walked over and sat beside me on my bed with the shoebox in her lap. She couldn't have looked further from angry. "What does it say?" she asked me, looking at the letter I'd opened.

She didn't want to look at it herself? "They want to put the house in your name," I said. "They've been trying to get you to sign something since you turned eighteen."

She nodded. It looked like she already knew what I was going to say. Seeing her look so haunted... well, I couldn't deal with it.

"Also, they want to know when you're going to respond to Time Magazine's request to put your name on their rich list."

She looked up at me, startled. "What? Honestly?"

I snorted. "No. I was joking."

Without warning, she put the shoebox aside and threw her arms around me. I hugged her back, relieved that she wasn't going to hate me forever and move out for stealing her mail. "Thank you," she said into my shoulder. IT was so sincere.

"What, for stealing your mail and hiding it?"

"That, too," she said and then pulled away, blotting her eyes on her sleeves. "I just don't know what I'd..." She looked like she had been about to say something serious, but then something occurred to her as she was looking at the shoebox. "What were you doing with them before if you weren't opening them?"

It sounded so stupid. "I was sorting them into date order, to make it easier if you ever wanted to open them."

She looked as if she was on the brink of actually bursting into tears, so I hugged her again before she could. She was shaking. "I never told you about the manor."

I pressed my lips together. I knew, anyway. Roth had accidentally told me once. "No, you didn't. You also didn't tell me you were so _totally_ loaded. I mean, I knew you had money, but wow. Loaded."

She didn't breathe for a moment. "My family is," she corrected me.

I closed my eyes.

I just couldn't say it to her: Lara, they're all gone. You're the only one left. It's your money, now.

When we parted again, she checked the date on the opened letter. "There will already be another waiting for me," she said. "It's going to be so odd doing this trip by myself."

"Then don't?" When she looked up at me, I elaborated. "Come on, as if that old bomb of yours would make it all the way to Surrey. We can take my car."

It turned out that her bomb _could_ make it all the way to Surrey, because she insisted on taking it and refused to let me drive.

She drove us past Croft Manor to show me on the way to the post office – I actually thought she was messing with me. It was _enormous_. I'd somehow been friends with, like, British royalty or something and never noticed. When I said as much, she scoffed. "It's practically falling apart," she said. "And it's impossible to get it bloody fixed because National Heritage won't let us make any changes to it without a million permits."

I think I just stared at her.

She cringed. "You must really hate me for not telling you," she said.

"Are you kidding? After everything _I_ do all the time? You must totally hate me."

She smiled faintly. It didn't look like hate at all.

Looking back at the manor, she scratched at a broken piece of the steering wheel absently. "I never wanted to think about it," she said after a long silence, "what it would be like to live there without mum and dad. I suppose I'm going to have to do something with it eventually. It will cost a fortune to fix if I just leave it."

As we pulled away from the manor, I looked out toward the country side and the cute little farms and stone houses. The weather was getting colder, and some of the chimneys had quaint little puffs of smoke rising from them.

Well, it was no central London. I bet the club scene was non-existent and the closest shopping mall was probably _in_ London, but I could live here. There was always eBay if I got desperate.

"Would you come and move out here?" I asked her.

She glanced at me. "Well, it's either here or my chateau in the south of France."

I double-took. "You've got _another..."_ The words died on my lips at her open smile.

"Kidding," she said.

"I totally hate you," I told her, but leaned over the handbrake and hugged her, anyway.


	35. Pros and Cons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set before the events of the game, Sam tries to convince herself to tell Lara how she feels. Pure, shameless fluff.

Okay, so I wrote a list.

Lara's always on my back about writing everything down and not forgetting important stuff, yadda yadda, so I thought I'd torture myself by finally taking her advice. I even downloaded this awesome app called The List that looks like a little notebook with Pros on one side and Cons on the other. Actually I kind of spent like twenty minutes playing with the different themes and not actually writing a list but whatever, there's no rush, right? I've been totally into her for two full years, twenty more minutes won't make any difference.

When I finally got around to actually using the app for its intended purpose, I was stuck on the Tube on the way back from class. There'd been some accident and the train was just standing there between two stations with absolutely no data reception. It was so long that complete strangers were actually starting to _talk_ to each other. In _London_.

So I sat with my back to the wall and took my app out, thumbing, ' _Reasons Why I Should Tell Lara I'm in Love with Her'_. I made a face at the screen: that header totally sounded like some tragic teenage love story. It wasn't even something I'd just say like that, anyway. I deleted it and then typed, ' _Reasons Why I Should Tell Lara I'm Into Her'._ Better, I decided, but now it was like some Hollywood rom com. At least that was one up on 'tragic teenage love story', though, so it would have to do. It wasn't like I was being graded on this or anything, anyway.

The first one in the 'Pros' was obviously that I could stop nearly giving myself a brain aneurism whenever she inadvertently touched me. If I told her, she'd either turn me down and then I'd know to hang myself get over her, or she'd be up for it and then we'd get it on and I wouldn't have to just imagine it anymore. Secondly was that there was the slim possibility she'd be up for it and then eventually after a few years we could make out. Well… hopefully more than that but Lara was one of those Not On The First Date people. Or, actually she was more like, Not In The First Six Months. At least she was with the last guy she dated. All that waiting she did just made me hope it was because she wasn't really into him. She wasn't, but not for the reasons I'd hoped.

At that second, some huge guy sat down next to me at an angle where he could see my screen. I quickly shifted so he couldn't. He gave me this look that basically suggested he thought he knew what I was looking at. It was gross.

"It's not porn, okay?" I told him. "If it was porn I'd be looking a lot less stressed out, trust me."

He just _stared_. The look on his face, I swear. "Okay…" he said, and then pretended to be very interested in his iPod.

Anyway, back to my list.

Other pros included the possibility that we could move in together and it wouldn't take me a hour to get to her place, that I could stop going out with random guys I didn't care about, and that Mom would stop constantly asking me about my love life. She was a bit weird about girl-on-girl stuff.

I supposed I should also put 'We hook up and live happily ever after' there, too. It was one of those things that you always secretly want but that never happen. I didn't put it there, though, because I didn't want to be too unrealistic.

Okay, so, cons…

Well, number one was _'Lara isn't into it'_ , which leads to, _'Lara is awkward about the whole thing'_ , _'Lara never looks at me the same way again'_ and ' _our friendship is ruined forever_.'

I put my cell in my lap and stared across at my reflection in the window on the other side of the carriage. Okay, those were some serious cons. Like, serious. I mean, it wasn't like I didn't have heaps of other friends but I wasn't that close to any of them. Not close like Lara and I were, anyway. Lara and I had been friends since I was fifteen and had one foot in juvie. In fact, I probably would have ended up in there if it weren't for her.

I closed my eyes and exhaled. Fuck. What would my life be like if it _did_ affect our friendship? She was involved with every tiny little part of my life. She helped me choose my _bed sheets_ for crying out loud. Actually, I managed to get her to sleep next to me in them as a result. But, anyway, if she suddenly disappeared, where the hell did that leave me? You could make a goddamn A-class sob-story out of the result. If it was a movie, the entire audience would be bawling their eyes out right there in the cinema.

All these completely pathetic ideas started surfacing in my brain and before I knew it, I was furtively trying to blot my eyes on my sleeves.

I'd kind of expected this whole list thing to be fun, but it was way too intense. Normally I was only this bleak two days before I was due, and then I'd be a sobbing wreck because I burnt the last slice of toast. It wasn't even over important stuff like this.

I noticed this cocky-looking guy grinning at me over the back of the seat. When he saw me looking at him he said, "Pretty sure that's not porn, but you look like you could use probably use some." He then waggled his eyebrows at me.

I gave him this completely disgusted look. "You did not just say that to a girl who has _tears running down her cheeks_. Real smooth."

He shrugged. "When opportunity knocks—"

I interrupted him. "—It is _so_ not knocking for you right now." I caught a sign slide past the window and stood up, tucking my cell into my pocket. "And here's my stop. Thank God." He had the audacity to give me this wide grin as I got off the train and then actually continued grinning at me as the train left.

Sometimes lesbianism just seemed like _such_ a good idea, seriously. I retrieved my cell and jotted that down in the Pro column.

I'd totally forgotten Lara had said she'd be over at my apartment that evening, so when I put my key into the lock and the door opened before I'd even turned it, all my tragic misery disappeared.

"Hey," Lara said, smiling and me and turning around to head back down the corridor. She was just wearing her pajama pants and they were so old they were basically transparent. Underneath she was wearing a pair of basic black panties. She was speaking to me over her shoulder. "You look like you've had terrible day. Would something delicious sort you out, you think?"

Something delicious? Get a grip, Sam.

As I hung up my jacket and my handbag, I noticed there was this awesome smell drifting from inside. "Whoa, did you actually cook something?"

She laughed once as she went into the kitchen. " _No_ ," she said, "but there's a new pizza shop that's opened across the road from my flat. I picked one up on the way here." She walked out of the kitchen with the box open to a magnificent super supreme with extra cheese.

"I'm not even joking," I said, and I wasn't. "I would totally marry you right now if you asked."

She laughed again. "It's a deal," she said. "I want to live somewhere that has water pressure. I practically have to drive all the way across London to your house so I can get the shampoo out of my hair. Here." She walked up to me and let me take a slice out of the box.

I took a bite, and discovered another Pro: a long and beautiful life where I get amazing pizza bought and delivered to me.

We wandered through to the living room, and Lara took a slice for herself and discarded the box on the coffee table as we slumped on the couch. When she'd finished her mouthful, she said, "I gather you didn't finish your submission?"

I was confused. "Actually, I did, and it turned out pretty good. What made you think I hadn't?"

She shrugged. "You looked so completely glum when I opened the door. The only things that ever get to you are your projects or your parents, and I know your Dad's at a conference and your Mum's in Brazil on that spiritual spa-retreat thing."

"I guess I'm more sensitive that you think," I said, trying to sound like I was joking.

She bought it, and grinned. "You were probably just hungry for this amazing pizza," she said. "Would you like a drink? They gave us some free purple Fantas. I put them in the fridge."

I was closer to the door than she was. "I'll get them," I said, standing up and heading into the kitchen.

My kitchen had spontaneously cleaned itself again; all the dishes were washed, even the brand new ones I had hardly used. There was a post-it on the cupboard where I kept them, too. I couldn't read it from the fridge, so I walked up to it. It was a picture of one of my new little dishes with a manga-style face saying, "I'm too young to be this dirty!" I snorted. _Lara_. This was _such_ a Pro.

I had to take a photo of it.

I rushed back out into the living with a big grin on my face. Lara was on the couch, looking down at something. "Nice one, Lara," I said, as she looked up at me. "I _know_ I should clean them more…" The words died on my lips as I realized she had my cell in her hands.

My heart practically fucking stopped. The list! "What are you—"

She looked absolutely stunned as she hurriedly tried to explain, "You said your new video looked good, so I thought I'd go to your Cloud…"

She wasn't watching my submission, though, because I saw The List app open. Of course it had put itself on my landing screen and Lara being Lara had thought she'd be smug and catch me secretly following her advice and writing To Do lists.

Holy fucking God. My life was over. "Lara, I…"

Her jaw was actually open. She looked down at the screen and then back up at me. "Sam, is this…" She paused. "This isn't a joke, is it?"

I swallowed. "So, like, I don't suppose you'd give me a few minutes to review that list before I answer the question, would you?"

Mutely, she typed something on my cell and then passed it to me saying, "Go for it." I could hardly breathe. "But before you do I just thought I should point something out."

I just stood there. "Yeah?"

"You were missing a potential outcome from the 'Pros' column."

I looked from her to the screen.

Typed underneath my last entry was a new one. I had to read it twice to make sure I'd got it right, and that it was actually real.

' _Lara is completely into it and jumps me right there on the spot before she can talk herself out of it again'._


	36. A Royal Affair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone prompted me on Tumblr: "A drabble where Lara receives an invitation to the Royal Wedding?"

It was a simply  _awful_  evening. Not only was it drizzling out, but it was cold and drizzling, dark and drizzling, and just an all-round horrible March night in London.

Because it was so awful, Lara couldn’t wait to get out of the rain and into her little flat where it was a least dry, if not very warm. In the process of bustling through the door, however, she nearly put a big wet boot-print on the mail lying on the floor inside. She lifted her boot just at the last minute (even if the bills rather deserved a good stomping), and dumped her wet winter clothes in the bathroom before going back to retrieve the mail.

Tabbing through it, most of it was nonsense—bill, bill, another bill, an invitation to speak somewhere that she’d deliberately ignored the email for, yet another  _bloody_  bill—and a large, ivory envelope with gold text and embossed with roses. Lara lifted it out of the bills and put them aside

It was huge and addressed to ‘ _Lady Lara Croft’_ , and when she turned it over, there was no return address. Curious, she ignored her cold nose and cold fingers (she’d been looking forward to popping the kettle on the moment she got in), and carefully tore the envelope open.

Inside there was a large card made of heavy and luxuriously paper—obviously an invitation of some sort, Lara thought—but the cursive on the invitation was so intricate and posh that she needed to stand right under the hall light to read it. Clearly  _someone_ thought a lot of themselves…

“ _Dear Lady Croft,_ ” she read aloud in her poshest voice, perhaps a little mockingly on reflection, “’ _it is with great joy that we invite you to the marriage of_ ’— wait, what on—?” she took a moment, squinting at the paper, needing to double-check what she’d read. “’ _His Royal Highness Prince Harry of Wales and Ms Meghan Markle at St Georges Chapel, Winsor Castle…_ ”

She stopped reading and blinked at the invitation. Well,  _that_  explained all the pomp: if anyone was entitled to be ridiculously posh and over the top, it was the royal family.

At least there was no mystery behind the invitation; as much as she disliked it, she was in fact a peer of the realm. Just another one of those fancy things she needed to do so that she wouldn’t feel horribly guilty she was letting the memory of her father down, she supposed…

She turned the card over a few times; there was some more information about the wedding, including the dress code, which for Lara would be a day dress and a hat (she scrunched her nose; she  _hated_ dresses), logistical information about the event… and clarification that the invitation was for ‘one other guest, such as your current partner’.

Lara exhaled. Oh, god. Sam would  _love_ the wedding (including the opportunity to wear a posh dress)—and she could practically see it all now: Sam would have her camera absolutely bloody glued to her face for the entire day, regardless of how rude and inappropriate that was, because that was Sam. 

Half-reading the rest of the information and worrying about Sam and her camera, she almost missed one critical piece of advice: ‘ _Please be aware no recording equipment of any sort will be allowed on guests. Mobile phones are not permitted to be visible at any point during the ceremony or entertainment’_.

Lara read it twice just to be sure, her stomach sinking: Sam would want to come, Sam would want to record the ceremony… and Sam wasn’t the sort of person who bothered at all with ‘silly’ rules.


End file.
